


Peaks of Eternal Light

by Fuzziestpuppy



Category: Far Cry (Video Games), Far Cry 4
Genre: Age Difference, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Student/Teacher, Angst, Complete, Drug Use, Explicit Sexual Content, Getting Together, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, M/M, Non-Consensual Drug Use, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-10-13 22:38:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 54,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17496707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fuzziestpuppy/pseuds/Fuzziestpuppy
Summary: If they’re to jeopardize Pagan's career and both their reputations…well.He and Ajay may as well make it something worth the risk.





	1. A New Situation

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brokibrodinson](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokibrodinson/gifts).



> Well, we didn't quite make our Christmas deadline with the First Annual Pajay Fic Exchange 2018, but better late than never! 
> 
> My prompt was Teacher/Student, which quickly expanded (or devolved, depending on your point of view) into a more general College AU. Which was surprisingly fun to write, and I 'm proud of how it turned out.

***

 

_8/20–12/14 MWF 8:30-9:45 AM – Introduction to Political Science RM 146B Instructor – P. Min_

Ajay Ghale reads over the slip of paper that has his schedule printed on it for the fourth time this morning. At least. Possibly the fifth. He double-checks the signage over the door…yep, he’s in Room 146B. 146A seemed to just have a bunch of computers in it. He glances at his watch. 8:28 AM on Monday, August the twentieth. His first college class.

He’s not…nervous, exactly, it’s just that it’s all brand-new. A new situation he’s put himself into. In a way, he has a distinct advantage over his younger classmates; at twenty-seven, all of his self-discovery bullshit days are already done, and he knows how to keep his nose clean, his head down, and _work_. So he’s gonna buckle down and work his ass off.

That’s what Mom wanted, after all. She would have cried genuine tears, to see him sitting in a classroom like this. She’d always wanted the same for herself, he could tell. And if there was something she couldn’t have for herself, then she wanted it double for Ajay. But Younger Ajay had been a punk loser who couldn’t get his shit together, running with bad crowds doing stupid-ass stuff…until she got sick. Until he had to care for her like she’d cared for him when he was small, and that right there had forced him to grow the hell up.

Ajay can’t…he can’t think about her here. It’s too fresh, the wound too raw. His eyes randomly water still, when he thinks about her. It’s only been a few weeks.

He examines the little slip of paper again as a distraction, and wonders what this Min guy is going to be like. He took a look at that dumb website where people talk shit about their professors, and his scores were…mixed. Students seemed to either love him or hate him. ‘Hard, but fair,’ said one. ‘OMG the fuking WOSRT do not take, just rambles and makes fun of ppl he doen’t like’ said another. Not that he puts any stock in any of it. No picture. No one could even come to a consensus on the stupid chili pepper hotness thing. That’s part’s probably the weirdest. Is he attractive, or not? It’s not rocket science. Seems like an easy question.

8:29. Ajay figures he’ll see for himself in a minute.

8:32. Dude’s late. Ajay doesn’t know how he feels about that. It’s not like he particularly wanted to roll out of bed at the asscrack of dawn to be here either.

8:34. P. Min himself finally sweeps in.

And sweeps in is the most accurate word Ajay can come up with. He swings the door shut behind him and lets it close with a loud clap, carelessly hard, startling the people in the back. Ajay’s in the front row, so close to the podium that he actually has to tuck his long legs up out of the aisle as Min breezes past him, a whiff of pricey cologne in his backdraft. Good god. He…he understands now.

He’s dressed head-to-toe in fucking pink. Some kind of pink Chinese silk brocade jacket that manages to look both really expensive and kind of…sleazy somehow. Silk shirt unbuttoned way low. Darker pink trousers, almost purple, with a crease you could cut butter with. The shoes look like fucking alligator hide or something, polished to a mirror shine. Ajay lets his gaze travel back up. Half-blond, half-not undercut hanging pretentiously over one eye. Gleam of an earring in one ear. Late forties, maybe, tall and well-built. In shape. But his face is where it starts to get really weird.

Min’s features are…vaguely East Asian, he guesses. Makes sense, considering the name, but maybe part white too, he can kind of see it. But he’s also wearing makeup. Fancy as his clothes: eyeliner, mascara, the works…and it looks so strange on his hard countenance; all angles and heavy eyebrows and high, sharp cheekbones. That rough-edged face with the contrast of the feminine makeup just creates…well, he can’t even begin to describe it.

Is he attractive? Ajay has no fucking idea. There’s no good answer to that question. All he knows is that he’s intensely interesting.

The guy currently has his back to the room and is scrawling something across the board. He carelessly tosses the chalk back into the tray and turns with a flourish. In foot-high letters, he’s written:

 

**Dr. Pagan Min**

Under that he’s written:

**Professor also acceptable**

 

Dr. Min taps at the words with a long, elegant finger. “Hello, boys and girls, welcome to Intro to Poli Sci. I am Pagan Min. But please, address me by my proper titles only; no ‘hey man,’ or ‘bro’ or any of that bullshit.” His voice is as eccentric as the rest of him; deeper than what he was expecting, silky and warm. Some kind of posh British accent. Dr. Min continues on. “Don’t be like the naughty little shit that I had to fail last semester because he had the audacity to address an email to me using ‘My Dude.’ Also, if you are not here for poli sci, or are otherwise confused, well…there’s the fucking door.”

While they’re all making sense of this profanity-laden pronouncement, he claps his hands together loudly, making everyone jump.

“Syllabus time!” he calls out cheerily. What in the actual fuck, thinks Ajay, trying to recover from the mental whiplash. “Here…take one, pass the rest back, blah blah you all know the drill.” He waves a hand lazily. Ajay doesn’t actually know the drill, but that’s all right. He can follow basic instructions. He grabs one and passes the rest on.

The document is printed on light pink paper; of course it is. “You may be asking yourselves, why the pink? It’s so you’ll always recognize _my_ papers amongst the sad detritus of your lives and prepare for class accordingly. Also, I tend to lose things, student work included, and this way they always make their way back to me in the end.” He waves a syllabus around like he wants their attention, but everybody’s already looking his way. Ajay personally couldn’t take his eyes off of him if he tried. “If you’ll glance over the pertinent sections, you’ll see that I do take attendance. If we are to be miserable in this class, then we shall all be miserable together. If I must drag my sorry self here and stand before you for an hour three times per week, then by god, you’ll be here too. Skip, and I will start dropping you by whole letter grades, so I expect asses in those seats, children! Barring university excused absences, or...whatever.”

Dr. Min glides over to another student in the front row and snags a book off her desk and holds it up. “Oh look, someone already has the text! I’m sure it’s over in the bookstore or online or something…this is what it looks like, come see me during my office hours if you have any problems obtaining one. Any questions? No? Good!” He drops the book back with a bang. “On to the roll call!”

Ajay didn’t think this seating thing out very well…he’s front and dead center, and close enough to Dr. Min to reach out and touch him when he’s behind the podium like he is now and not breezing around the room. A little uncomfortably close. Would he be offended if he got up and moved?

“Wherever you are sitting now, I do ask that you stay in that seat for the rest of the semester. It makes learning your names ever so much easier…unless my inventing embarrassing and possibly risqué nicknames for you sounds like something you would enjoy. Then by all means, feel free to shift about.” Well, there goes that plan, as Ajay slumps a bit in his seat. But it’s fine. As long as he keeps his mouth shut and doesn’t draw attention to himself, it’ll be fine.

Dr. Min digs a garish pink and gold pen from his inside jacket pocket and squints slightly at the paper in front of him with the air of someone who needs reading glasses. He pats at his other pockets and apparently doesn’t find what he’s looking for, shrugs a little as if to say fuck it, and continues on. Ajay mostly tunes him out as he proceeds through the list, now held at arm’s length.

Somewhere during the B’s, the scraping of a chair from behind startles him. A female voice calls out from the back, loud and obnoxious, “Oh Professor, I’m sorry, but that’s incorrect. It’s Ay-meeee-ta, not Ah-mi-ta!”

Dr. Min glares at her from under his eyebrows.

A tense silence.

“Noted. Now _sit down,_ ” he grates out.

He’s curious how badly his new professor will butcher his own name. He’s, well, he’s something else, but kind of fascinating, and Ajay is willing to go easy on him and let him go with AJ Gale. If Dr. Min were a complete and obvious dick, Ajay would have made him sweat over the proper pronunciation with a scowl on his face, like he was being _so_ culturally insensitive and offending the Brown Kid.

He was such an asshole in high school. Finally it’s his turn to raise his hand, right after Gardner, Jerome.

“Ghale...Ajay. Ajay Ghale.” Dr. Min says it perfectly. He says it just like Mom always used to. He says Ajay’s name in his rough-silk voice, and _blanches_.

Ajay frowns, and sits up a bit in his seat. Even his lips have gone pale, almost colorless. Dr. Min’s dark eyes meet his, the first time he’s even glanced in his direction, even though they’re less than five feet apart.

They widen…and then go warm, warm and sunny. Ajay can almost feel it on his skin, that warm regard. “There you are…” he murmurs, low and intimate, so low that probably only Ajay heard. His color is rapidly coming back.

And then he’s off again, calling for ‘Grant, Chelsea’ like nothing was ever strange at all.

Ajay blinks. What the fuck? He looks up at Dr. Min’s bored face, listens to his equally bored drawl as he calls for Ramirez, Rana, Rodriguez, Webster. Did…did he just imagine that? But before he can ponder it further, he’s gathering up papers, stepping away from the podium, erasing the board.

“Well, that’s that, at least for today. Oh, make sure to read the first two chapters of the first unit in your text for Wednesday, office hours and my email are on your syllabi should you need anything,” he says, loud and cheerful, over the sounds of people slowly beginning to pack up. He saunters over to the door. Swings it open. “Ta, for now!” Is out, the heels of his absurdly glossy shoes clicking down the hall.

Ajay sits there, feeling just a little stunned by the human whirlwind that is Pagan Min, buffeted by a maelstrom in pink silk. He glances at his watch. His first class lasted less than fifteen minutes from start to finish.

 

***

 

Pagan Min saunters down the hallway like he has not one care in the world, as if his first class went splendidly, as if the world isn’t pitching out from under him.

He trots up the stairs to the third floor and stops by the staff lounge to grab a cup of coffee on his way back to his office, as is his habit. He even waves a hello at Paul Harmon as he’s doing the exact same thing, gearing up for his own morning classes.

Hell, he even manages to whistle a bit, hand in his pocket and the attendance sheet tucked safely under his elbow. He only trembles minutely as he gets his keys out and gets the door open to his little office, sets the steaming cup down safely. He turns and shuts the heavy oak door gently.

Pagan leans against the wood as his legs fold under him. He slides bonelessly down it, hands over his mouth.

Ajay Ghale. Ajay _fucking Ghale,_ in his _class._

How had he not noticed him, practically underfoot? His eyes…when he’d looked into that boy’s dark eyes in his handsome, dark face… _her_ eyes, _her_ face...his heart had lurched in his chest, to the point of physical pain. A cold wash as the blood had drained from his own face. He had felt that as well. How in the hell had he not noticed Ishwari back from the dead, as a boy this time? He had wanted to reach out to him, reach for that beloved face and trace a thumb across the wings of his eyebrows, touch the smattering of freckles across his nose. Assure himself that he was real. His Ajay. But the boy had had no recognition in his expression at all when he had stared back at him with that little frown.

Boy…hell. _Man._ He counts it up. Ajay is twenty-seven now, twenty-seven years old, and he suddenly feels every one of those years. All those years of waiting, waiting for her to keep that promise. Each is a brick laid across his shoulders, shoving him to the floor…and not one of them can he have back again.

She was too young, far too young. He had thought…they still had time. Perhaps she thought the same. The injustice of it still stings, as the pattern on the carpet goes watery in his vision.

He forces himself to get to his feet in self-disgust, knees shoving against that weight on him so he can get a goddamn napkin and hopefully salvage his mascara.

Once he’s upright, it’s better…he feels better. He blots carefully…there. Probably doesn’t even have to make repairs. He sits in his chair and sips at his cooling coffee.

He’s here now. Ajay is here with him, or at least is in his orbit, and that thought warms him down to his soul. That’s what really matters; none of them can go back, only forward, and something beloved that he’d thought lost forever has entered his life again. Lost, and then found. He’s come back to him.

He’s come back.

 

***

 

Ajay doesn’t have any classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, but he gets up early anyway and checks his email. His refund finally came through, about fucking time, so he gets ready and heads to school so he can go buy his poli sci book. As he’s waiting for the train, he thinks back on how the rest of the day was not nearly as exciting as that first class. His art history professor seems to just…hate all of them equally, and his math teacher, an adjunct younger than he is, is seriously trying way too hard. (Dude, math is like, so lit…you’ll see!). Sociology’s pretty good though.

Well, shit. As soon as he got to school he went straight to the bookstore, and while he was able to get everything else, that one book that he really needs is sold out. Now that he has the money, there are no poli sci books in the bookstore for him to buy, just an empty spot on the shelf that’s labeled for his class. They told him they’d have more of them in by Friday but that’s too late, he needs to read those sections so he’ll be ready for Dr. Min’s class in the morning. He doesn’t strike Ajay as being the type to be patient with his nervous explanation of how there were no books and so he couldn’t read the material.

But he did say to come and see him if they had problems, right? He digs around in his bag, and sure enough, his professor was right: that pink paper really does stand out against his other stuff. He’s going to have to buy a binder or something to keep all this shit in. He pulls out Min’s syllabus and luckily for him, his office hours are on Tuesdays and Thursdays, right after lunch. He should be in now, in fact, as he hastily consults his watch and heads off that way.

He finds Room 304 easily enough, it’s in the same building as their class, just up two floors. He’d have known he was in the right place anyway, even if the nameplate had been missing: the closed door is decorated with snarky political cartoons. He lifts his hand and raps on the heavy wood.

No answer.

Ajay double-checks the schedule hanging on the door, nearly obscured by a Doonesbury strip. He should be in there. He glances down, sees the light on under the door. He knocks again, a little harder. Still nothing. His palms are a little sweaty. Maybe…maybe if he just opened it a little? He presses the handle down carefully, and it doesn’t seem to be locked. Surely if he didn’t want to be interrupted or bothered, he’d lock it?

Oh, fuck this. These are his hours, there’s his office…frankly, he’s starting to feel fucking ridiculous tiptoeing around this door. Around _him,_ if he’s being honest, so he summons his courage and just…yanks it open. He calls out, “Dr. Min, do you have a moment…”

Dr. Min is indeed in there, because he jerks with a loud curse in what is probably Chinese as he nearly tips his chair over, papers flying as his shiny shoes knock them off from where he had them propped up on the desk. He rakes the headphones out of his ears, face stunned. Ajay is frozen in the doorway, eyes wide.

Shit, he’s gone and fucked it up now; the first time he’s gone to a professor’s office hours and he’s done something wrong. The website he was reading talked about how it was such an important part of the Learning Process or some bullshit and he’ll be lucky if his professor doesn’t shove him out and slam the door…and then Dr. Min’s face cracks into a sunny grin.

“Oh, Mr. Ghale! Do come in, my apologies…here, sit, sit!” he says, jumping up and raking more papers off of the spare chair in the corner, although he sets these safely out of the way on top of his filing cabinet. He’s in just his shirt today, no jacket, his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. That’s probably because he has the window open and it’s letting in the late August heat, but the air is fresh. A little warm, but a nice change from the sterile building interior. A few raggedy potted plants occupy the sill.

“I, uh…I didn’t mean to bother you,” Ajay says, looking around with his bag on his lap. Dr. Min’s office is smaller than he was expecting, but the view from the window is a good one, overlooking the quad instead of the busy street on the other side of the building. He examines the overflowing bookshelves because his eyes keep being drawn to the v of Dr. Min’s exposed chest. He only has the top two buttons of his shirt undone, but there’s something about his collarbones and the hollow at the base of his throat that keep distracting him.

“Not bothering me a bit, not a bit…if anything I should be apologizing to you. I…rarely have students come to my office hours.” He lounges back in his chair with a creak and folds his hands over his stomach. “So how may I be of service this fine day, my boy?”

“Well, I went to the bookstore today to get the book for our class, but they’re all sold out. I couldn’t go get it until my refund check cleared. Won’t have any more ‘til Friday.” Ajay likes this, the informality of it. Just the two of them in his comfortable, lived-in looking office. The books and the lamp and the big desk make it kind of cozy. It’s not what he was expecting at all.

“Oh! That’s an entirely fixable problem. Simple.” He gets up and rummages in the bookshelf for a few moments and pulls down a textbook. “Here you are! We’re using the fourth edition in class and this is the third, but it shouldn’t be much of an issue. They generally don’t change these things much from book to book.” He holds it out with a cheery little grin that has Ajay grinning back.

“Thanks. I’ll bring it back as soon as they get more in and I can buy it.”

“No, keep it. Bring it back at the end of the semester if you like, but if you don’t use it it’s just going to sit in here and collect dust. No, no…” he holds up a hand against Ajay’s protests. “I insist. Do you know,” and his voice drops low, confidential, “most of your classmates wouldn’t have bothered. Perhaps twenty percent of them bother with any given reading assignment at all, book in hand or not.” Dr. Min sits down again, back to his loungy, comfortable position, long legs stuck out in front of him. “So I don’t mind at all letting you borrow that. Just you coming here shows me that you’re a good student who cares, and that will take you very, very far indeed.” Again, that warm smile for him.

“Well, I really appreciate it. I guess I better go get busy reading for tomorrow.” He stands up and Dr. Min stands too, holds out his hand. Ajay takes it, noting that they’re eye to eye, nearly the same height. His hand is big and warm and just a little rough. Nice firm grip.

“I’ll see you in the morning, Mr. Ghale,” he says, and with a final little squeeze lets go. As Ajay is walking out the door, he hears Dr. Min clear his throat behind him. “Come see me again sometime, won’t you?” He pauses and hastily adds, “If, you know, if you have questions or anything. I’ll be here.”

Ajay smiles. “Yeah…yeah, I’ll come back. Thank you again.”

“Anytime, Mr. Ghale, anytime.”

 

***


	2. Routines

***

 

Wednesday morning. Half the class seems to be asleep.

“Politics is power.”

Dr. Min writes it on the board in his florid, not-easy-to-read scrawl, and then underlines it for emphasis.

“Who has it, who takes it, who gives it up. What they do with it. So, in turn, political science is the study of power.”

Dr. Min is not the best lecturer, Ajay has to admit; he tends to jump from topic to topic, and it’s sometimes hard to follow his flighty leaps of logic. But the material itself is _fascinating,_ and he finds himself taking extensive notes. His classmates seem…less than enthusiastic. But that’s all right. If they’re quiet back there, it kind of feels like he and Dr. Min are the only ones in the room. A lecture for one.

It’s a feeling that he kind of likes.

 

As the days pass, it amazes Ajay that Dr. Min can be so nice and funny to him, and so unrelentingly awful to his classmates. Although it’s not like they don’t provoke the shit out of him pretty much continually.

Some kid in the back corner whose name is Robbie or something is always cracking jokes at random, which would probably be fine if it wasn’t always in the middle of lecture and if they weren’t always about shit. That whole back row is a fucking menace. On the other side of the room is where Sabal and Amita Bhandari sit. They’re like some kind of social justice warriors or something, always talking about campus protests and how they’re both going to run for Student Council President, but they can’t agree on anything. They’re siblings and it shows because they constantly, loudly, _annoyingly_ fight with each other at every opportunity. Over the stupidest shit. Dr. Min is always bellowing at them and making them sit on opposite sides of the room. It’s the only way anybody can get any peace. He sneers at them and mockingly calls them the Bobbsey Twins just because it pisses them off. Ajay’s also pretty sure that he keeps mispronouncing Amita’s name on purpose, because she gets bent out of shape and corrects him _every single time._

But sometimes, the stars align, the angels sing, and they manage to have a discussion as a class.

“So, say you have a small country with an authoritarian regime, one that’s becoming increasingly destabilized. The only major export is heroin and not all that much of it. The country itself is more or less geographically and ideologically split in half, with the northern part mostly compliant and the south a hotbed of dissent. The citizens are rebelling, but the rebel faction has two leaders that can’t agree on what sort of governance they want to see implemented,” Dr. Min tells them. “One wants to maintain the status quo and use that as a base to modernize the country, the other wants to burn it all down and return to traditional values. That should be enough to go on, for now,” he says, glancing around the room. “Mr. Bhandari! We haven’t heard your dulcet tones in awhile. What you you make of all this? Which path would you choose?”

The man in question slowly crosses his arms. “What I think is that titles are just a bourgeoisie invention to create artificial division amongst the people.” Dr. Min rolls his eyes. Ajay is close enough to hear him mutter something that sounds distinctly like _oh, for fuck’s sake._

“Jesus Christ, boy…you know what? Fine. _Sabal,_ please answer the bloody question.”

“Traditional values. They should go back to what’s been working for so many years. Get rid of the drugs, first off…they’re poison. If a people can’t hold onto their religion and their institutions and their culture, then they’re already lost. These things are essential for a healthy and functional society.” His admittedly handsome face twists into a little smirk, like he has all the answers and it’s all so simple and obvious. Ajay finds his own eyes rolling.

“What the hell!” Amita nearly yells beside him. “Oh, ‘traditional religious values,’ is it? You mean the ones that keep women subjugated, that has old men marrying little girls…what fucking _bullshit_! They need to keep the heroin, at least temporarily. You can’t run a revolution on no money, you _know_ that! Besides, what are they going to do if they win and there’s no way to build schools and hospitals and infrastructure? What then, idiot? Sit and starve?”

“It’s true! You make a good point, Ms. Bhandari. You can’t run a country on goat shit and millet exports,” Dr. Min remarks conversationally, but neither of them are listening. Sabal’s face is turning red, his dumb little ponytail twitching as he builds up a head of steam.

“Listen,” he growls, finger in his sister’s face. “They can burn all those damn poppy fields, and start growing actual _food._ They can be farmers again, happily working the land and praying to their gods and having children that will grow up knowing their own culture…”

“God, how are you such a moron? They’re not growing poppies by choice, they’re growing them because _that’s all that will grow._ They need to get a UN envoy in there to provide humanitarian assistance until they…”

“Oh! So that’s your big solution, huh?” Sabal nearly bellows. “Make them dependent on _foreign aid,_ instead of standing on their own two feet? Why, I…”

“What, what?!” Amita shrieks. “Just come out and say it, you fucking chauvinistic pig! So everybody can hear it! ‘I, Sabal Bhandari, endorse statutory rape and religious fundamentalism...’”

“ _Fuck_ you, Amita!”

_“Fight me, bitch!!”_

Dr. Min is tall enough and his arms long enough that he’s able to get a hand in the collar of Amita’s puffy vest and Sabal’s denim jacket and drag them apart.

“Oh, what a spirited discussion!” he roars cheerfully over them, louder than the two of them put together. It echoes off the walls. “But I believe that it’s time to give the floor for someone else for a bit, don’t you think?” Dr. Min’s voice drops to something low and hard and savage. “You two, opposite sides of the room right _fucking_ now. Be glad I don’t make you put your noses in the corners as well.”

With glares and fierce muttering, they do as they’re told. Dr. Min turns around and claps his hands. “So, where were we?” and it’s like that cheerfulness was never gone. “Ah! Yes, let’s see…Mr. Rana, we haven’t heard from you yet today. Although, mind you, if I hear the word ‘shit’ from you I won’t be held accountable for my actions.”

Robbie or whatever his name is leans forward a little.

“Well, I mean, are you sure that’s fair? Because, dude, you guys were _just talking_ about infrastructure, and disposing of everybody’s shit properly seems like it would be really important and…”

Dr. Min’s face is thunderous. “Good bloody _god,_ boy, _what did I just fucking say?!_

“You said not to talk about shit, man! I mean, Dr. Min! But I do think the sanitation question really is…”

“No, absolutely not. Moving _on_ now.” He rubs at his forehead just over his left eye, as if he has a headache brewing. Ajay can’t say that he blames him, but Dr. Min catches him watching.

“Mr. Ghale.” His tone is nearly fond. “Please tell me that you have something good to contribute to this charming…I hesitate to call it a discussion anymore, but I digress. Have you anything to add?”

Ajay shifts a little uncomfortably in his seat. He does have stuff that he wants to say though.

“Well, I thought about what Sabal and Amita said, and…I think they’re both right. And that they’re really, really wrong, at the same time.” He tries to not look in either’s direction, doesn’t want to lose focus on what he’s saying. It feels important, even though it’s not a real situation. “It’s all out of balance, you see? The drugs are awful, but so is people starving to death. Religion is important, but not when it hurts kids. Even what, uh, Robbie said about infrastructure, that’s important too, even though it’s not really that political.” He rubs at the eraser on his pencil, mostly addressing his desk. “It seems to me that the function of government should be to stand between the people and disaster, and neither of those ways do that. So they can’t really function as a government. If people are high all the time and dying of overdoses, that’s a disaster. If people are getting sick and the babies die because there’s sewage everywhere, that’s a disaster too. So is when religious institutions hand down a bunch of decrees that do nothing but hurt people, because _they_ want to stay in power and fear and hate are good ways to do that.”

He studiously ignores all of the eyes that he can feel on him. “So I guess what I’m trying to say is that civil war is…it’s always brutal. So bad that it should always be the very last resort. The two rebel leaders need to figure out how to work together, and compromise. And then once they’ve done that, they gotta stop trying to overthrow the guy that’s already in charge. Because they’re just ripping the country apart. They have to figure out how to go and talk with him, and the three of them have to sit down together and figure out how to save their country. Maybe that’s like, naïve of me, to even think of that as a possibility, but…well. That’s what I think.”

Ajay looks up to find his professor’s eyes on him, warm and happy and maybe a little proud.

“Well said, Mr. Ghale,” he says softly. “Well said.”

 

After that class, after that proud look, Ajay goes over to Old Main, to the Registrar’s Office, and switches his major from Undecided to Political Science.

 

That first week passes in a blur of figuring out where he needs to be and when to be there, how to get by with carrying the minimum amount of stuff around with him (his books weigh a metric fuckton) and just…how to do this and that and where everything is.

Poli Sci is by far his favorite class; not just because he finds the subject matter so interesting, but because it’s such a hot mess. He _never_ knows what’s going to happen in that fucking class. Sometimes it’s like it was the other day, where between Dr. Min’s roaring and Sabal’s bellowing and Amita’s screeching it’s amazing that no one’s called campus police yet and said yes, it’s an emergency, there’s obviously someone being murdered in room 146B.

Other times it’s quiet, and peaceful; Dr. Min will have an article or something that he’s printed out and wants them to read and discuss, and everybody will take one and just…sit there quietly and actually read them. His professor will sit at the table in the corner and work on stuff while they read, and Ajay finds himself surreptitiously watching him. He…he finds himself doing that a lot. Watching and noticing things about him. Like the way he moves, his intensity filling the room. How he often rubs his earring when he’s thinking about something. The velvety-looking skin behind his ears, easy to see on account of how short he keeps his hair. How, while that one pink jacket is maybe a little tacky, he’s a super sharp dresser, and that he looks very nice in a three-piece. Which he wore on Friday. Ajay personally thinks that a man who voluntarily wears a waistcoat in August has to have something wrong with him, but he does cut a fine figure in it.

Speaking of someone with something wrong with him, he himself is up on the second floor of the library by the big windows. Technically, he’s doing his sociology homework but in reality he’s watching the back of Hewlett Hall, where Dr. Min will appear in about sixty seconds. You can almost set your watch by him. It’s Thursday right before lunchtime, and he’s always out the door by 11:45 sharp.

And there he is, jacket slung over one shoulder, other hand stuck in his pocket with a book under his elbow, bright hair gleaming, bright teal waistcoat vibrant in the late summer sun. It accentuates the nice v of his torso, his well-built shoulders clad in white silk, his trim waist. His shoes catch the light, even at this distance.

He strolls confidently along through the crowded quad and somehow, no one seems to notice him. No one even _glances_ at him.

Ajay hasn’t been able to take his eyes off of him for nearly two weeks now. It’s maybe becoming a problem. Maybe. Or it could be just a harmless…crush, or something; kind of ridiculous to use that word now that he’s coming up on thirty in a few years. But nonetheless, he’s been attracted to men before, had the occasional crushes on other boys when he was younger, no biggie. Nothing ever came of it. He’s had a few girlfriends, but nothing serious, and nothing lately.

Mom was sick for a long time. He’s been alone for a long time. It was always just the two of them.

No, as he watches Dr. Min seat himself at his usual table near the big windows of the dining hall and open his book, it’s not what he looks like, although it certainly doesn’t hurt any. It’s the way that his eyes seem to light up when he spots him. The way he seems…lonely, maybe. The other professors always seem to be interacting with each other, in pairs and little groups. Dr. Min doesn’t. The other teachers don’t seem to want much to do with him. He eats alone, every time Ajay’s seen him.

Well, fuck it, he’s pretty lonely too. And Dr. Pagan Min is intriguing. He could use some lunch as well. Maybe Dr. Min could use some company.

But before he can even get out of the entryway of the library, he spots Sabal and Amita. He heaves a sigh and tries to duck out of the doorway to avoid being spotted, but he’s too late and they make a beeline for him anyway. Great. He can feel his eyes rolling. Hopefully Dr. Min isn’t rubbing off on him.

“One of us! One of us!!” they chant in unison, laughing.

“Uh, what?”

“Poli Sci, Ajay! That’s wonderful!” Amita says.

“Yes, it is like you are our brother now. Our brother in arms! In major! Our protest buddy!” says Sabal.

How in the hell did they find out that he changed his major?

“Anyway, now that we’re in the same department you can help me organize my run for Student Council President! Dr. Min and Dr. Harmon have been…less than helpful, but with you on my side…” Amita all but bats her eyelashes at him. Ugh.

“If anything, brother, it’s me that you should be campaigning for! I know that I can create some real change around here.” It may be just his imagination, but is Sabal standing so close and brushing against his arm like that on purpose? Also ugh.

“Ha! You wouldn’t know ‘real change’ if it slapped you on both asscheeks…”

Sabal’s face darkens. Sensing a storm brewing, Ajay heads them both off at the pass.

“Oh man…I’d love to help the both of you, but I’m not going to have much free time. I have to get a job.” Only half of the statement is a lie. Ajay congratulates himself.

“Is that right, brother? Have you checked into work study?” He hasn’t. Doesn’t know what that is, in fact…but he really wants to cut this short so he can get over to the dining hall.

“Oh, that would be perfect for you!” Amita informs him. “Go down to Old Main and talk to HR. The jobs are always easy…reshelf books in the library, be an assistant to a professor, that kind of stuff. It’s nice to not have to go off campus.”

Assistant to a professor. Don’t have to leave campus.

“Actually, that sounds perfect. Just what I’m looking for.”

“Great!” the two say almost in unison. And then advance on him with buttons.

“It’s the least you can do to show your support, if you can’t help on the campaign trail.”

“As if, Sabal. Like you’ve got a chance! Keep dreaming…”

They finally, _finally_ leave him be and wander off, still bickering. Now attached to the front of his green jacket is one large button with a bright orange A on it, and nothing else. The other button sports a large blue S.

Ajay sighs, and pulls them both off as soon as Amita and Sabal round the corner. They don’t need a campaign organizer, they need a fucking graphic designer.

Maybe he should go run by HR first; while Dr. Min is absurdly punctual about going to lunch, he often dawdles past one o’clock.

The big glass Human Resources office is easy enough for him to find.

“Uh, yeah…I’d like to sign up for a work study job.”

“Sure thing,” the cheerful woman at the front counter tells him. “What’s your student ID number? …all right, looks like you’re eligible…did you want to be put in the general pool, or have you already talked to a particular instructor?”

“I’ve…uh, I’ve already talked to a professor about it. Dr. Min.” He really hopes this lie doesn’t come back to bite him in the ass.

“Oh! Let’s see…hmm. He’s not on the request list…but you’ve already run it by him?” He nods, trying to play it cool. “Well…I’m sure he just forgot then.” She taps at her keyboard for a bit, the soul of helpful bureaucracy. “I’ll go ahead and add him, and assign you…there! Take this form and work out a ten hour a week schedule with him, have him sign it, you sign here, and bring it back. Easy!”

That was easy, he thinks, folding up the paper and stowing it safely in one of his zippered pockets.

In the dining hall, Ajay goes ahead and gets a tray and loads it up. After he pays, he makes a beeline for Dr. Min.

Before he can lose his nerve, he just…awkwardly shoves his tray onto the table. “You mind?”

Dr. Min looks up from his book, maybe a little startled. Ajay watches as he gazes past him, his eyes moving and probably noting the number of perfectly functional and empty tables in their vicinity.

“Er, no, not at all. Please, have a seat,” he says, as he lays his book aside and picks up his knife and fork.

He has a piece of pizza on a plate in front of him. Ajay pauses in the middle of opening his soda. No way. What the fuck.

He watches, entranced, as Dr. Min elegantly cuts a bite of pizza, forks it, and pops it neatly into his mouth. Chews, swallows. Notes Ajay watching this process.

“What?” he says, a little defensively.

“Nothing. Just…you know. That’s a first for me, I guess,” Ajay says, fiddling with his napkin.

“Well, I did spend many of my formative years in England, where eating with your hands is not the done thing,” he responds, with a touch of asperity.

“Oh yeah? England, huh? So what was that like?”

Ajay listens, almost forgetting to eat his own burger and fries, as Dr. Min tells him something about what it was like growing up and spending most of the year at a pricey British boarding school, and summers in the grimiest, most crime-ridden areas that Hong Kong had to offer as the son of a Triad gangster. He can tell that he’s definitely getting the sanitized, family-friendly version of this, with a whole lot of shit left out, but it’s still fucking fascinating. He can forgive him eating pizza with a knife and fork like a madman, as long as he’ll keep telling stories like this. Dr. Min, for his part, seems to enjoy having a rapt audience. As Ajay’s interest shows no signs of waning, his gestures expand; his whole being seems to expand, his voice getting louder and more vibrant, his story coming to life.

Ajay could watch him for hours, but eventually Dr. Min picks up his phone.

“Damn! I was supposed to be in my office twenty minutes ago. I wouldn’t suppose you’d like to come with me, would you?”

“Yeah, sure. I needed to come see you anyway.”

When they get back to Dr. Min’s office, he unzips his pocket and sticks his hand in for that paper…and promptly stabs his finger on one of those fucking buttons. He pulls them out and Dr. Min starts laughing.

“Oh, I see the Bobbsey Twins have gotten to you! Look here, my boy, look here,” and pulls open a drawer in his desk. Inside are at least ten of each kind of button; a whole pile of orange A’s and blue S’s. “They seem to think that continually shoving these under my office door will somehow engender me to their cause, or perhaps guilt me into wearing them? I’ve no idea. Here, feel free to dump them in, if you don’t want them.”

Ajay gratefully adds them to the pile and passes over the work study paper from his pocket.

“Hmm, what’s this then?” Dr. Min holds the sheet at arm’s length, and then goes on a search for the glasses that are perched on top of his head. Ajay taps the top of his own head. “Ah, yes…thank you, my boy.”

“I signed up for work study and they asked if I had a professor in mind and I mentioned you. And they said that you were available, so they assigned me,” Ajay says. Not _technically_ a lie.

Dr. Min looks a little taken aback for a moment. “Oh…I see.” His eyebrows furrow. “I don’t recall putting myself on the request list for a work study student…”

Ajay’s insides clench slightly.

“Well, no matter! I’ve probably just gone and forgotten about it. Do come and sit down…it says here that we’ll have to make a work schedule for you?”

 

And so begins their routine; class three times a week, lunch, then Dr. Min’s office hours together until six in the evening. The lunches are not obligatory, of course, but they end up eating together almost every Tuesday and Thursday anyway. It’s a good lead-in for the work hours. After that first time eating together, Ajay often arrives to find Dr. Min already there, a burger and fries and a Coke waiting on him.

“Dr. Min, you really don’t have to do that, I’m not…destitute, or anything,” Ajay says in dismay, after the third or fourth time it’s happened.

Dr. Min just waves off his protests with an airy hand.

“I am not yet so old that I don’t remember the crushing poverty of my own student days! My boy, listen to me. _Students are poor_. Even the rich ones who are gifted with money from home! They invariably blow that money on beer and weed, and are thus reduced to packaged noodles and scrounging in their couch cushions for change just like their less well-to-do brethren. It’s nearly the universal experience. And do you know what?” This he punctuates with little jabs of his fork. “I had professors who helped me along the way as well, with kindly and encouraging words and the occasional hot lunch when I started looking a bit gaunt.” He sips at his tea. “Perhaps someday you can pass the favor along.”

Dr. Min seemingly goes back to his book, and with a sigh Ajay starts in on the fries before they get cold. It’s not long, however, before he notices a movement in his peripheral vision, and when he looks, Dr. Min’s hand is creeping across the table. It spiders across the distance between them and seizes one of his fries between long, nimble fingers. He looks up further to see Dr. Min’s eyes crinkled in mirth as the hand withdraws, prize obtained, and he pops the fry into his mouth with a grin. Ajay grins back at him.

How did he ever wonder whether he was attractive or not?

 

Later that same day, while he’s studying and Dr. Min is pretending to grade but is staring out the window more often than not, he writes his phone number on a little slip of paper and slides it to Dr. Min’s elbow. Ajay watches from the corner of his eye as he picks it up.

“Y’know, if you ever need to get ahold of me about work stuff, or something like that,” he says, and it only comes out a little fast. _Or if you’re feeling lonely, or if you just want to talk to me, or…_

Dr. Min has his phone out. Dr. Min is punching in his number. He picks up his pen and writes his own on the back of Ajay’s slip of paper and pushes it back across. His face is oddly expressionless.

“There. Now you have mine too. If you…you ever need to get ahold of me for something.”

When Ajay reaches for it, their fingers touch. Their fingers touch, and he realizes he wants them to go on touching. He swallows hard. But he pulls away.

 

There’s really not much at all for him to do; this job is definitely heavy on the study part and light on the work. Occasionally Dr. Min will ask him to go get his copies off the copier, or sit and staple things, or run stuff over to the mailroom. He likes doing these things; likes feeling useful, like he’s making his life a little easier. He also likes the fact that there’s often more touching involved. A pat on his shoulder in passing, the press of his hand in thanks when he brings him a fresh cup of coffee. A brush of warm fingers when he hands over a stack of papers. None of it adds up to much, it’s just…nice, and he finds himself wanting more of it.

 

***


	3. Another World

***

 

Another warm and lazy afternoon in his office, and Pagan is attempting to entertain himself since Ajay is making much better use of his time and is actually working.  He is obligated to make himself available to students for ten hours per week, but hardly anyone takes advantage of it.  No one since…Ajay, actually.

He’s currently rolling one of those foam stress balls back and forth along his desk top, back and forth.  A thought strikes him and he pulls out his phone to make a little ramp, but he also needs something to set the phone on to get it to be the right angle.  He grabs his pen and props the phone up…there!  Now he can probably fire the ball all the way to his keyboard, perhaps even into the wastepaper basket, if he puts a little force behind it…

…his phone vibrates and knocks itself off its makeshift stand with a clattering thump, startling him.  Ajay looks up from his math homework, and Pagan waves him back to it. 

Yuma.  He rolls his eyes, now utilizing the ball for its intended purpose by squeezing the hell out of it.

 

_4:14 pm - Guess who’s in my class this semester?_

_A blast from the past_

 

 He can’t help but glance up at Ajay.  She’d die if she knew he was his assistant this semester.  Or kill him.  Or kill the both of them, more likely.

 

  _4:15 pm - Oh?  And who would that be_

 

  _4:16 pm - Don’t play dumb with me, I have his_

_schedule pulled up here on my computer.  You_

_just fucking watch yourself since you seem to_

_have a weakness for filthy whores.  Like mother,_

_like son_

 

 Why in the bloody hell did Ajay have to sign up for fucking _art history_ , of all things?

When he doesn’t dignify that with a response, she fires another text at him. 

 

  _4:18 pm - I’m serious Pagan, don’t you dare_

_embarrass us like that again.  That Ghale boy_

_will absolutely make a fool of you.  Steer clear_

_of him, I mean it_

 

_4:19 pm - Whatever you say, my dear_

 

 _Embarrass us._   God, what a laugh.  As if everything that happened, as if that rift in his life could be reduced to a word like _embarrassment_ …well.  Anyway.

Yuma can get under his skin like no one else; she seems to have a talent for it, as he clamps down on the ball again.

Ajay glances up at him again.  “You okay?  Everything okay?”

“Oh, fine, fine.  Just my sister being a raging cunt, is all.  Her usual modus operandi.”  Something keeps stopping him from informing Ajay that said sister is his hateful Dr. Lau, Associate Professor of Art History.  It always just seems…so awkward.  So trite, to work into a conversation.  This little lie by omission might come back to haunt him, but it’s not as if he’s going to pay attention to a single word that _Yuma_ has to say.  If Ajay finds out somehow and corners him about it, perhaps he’ll just disown her on the spot.

Pagan sighs and pulls a stack of grading towards his side of the desk.  He may as well at least look at the fucking things, mildly embarrassed by Ajay’s productivity.

 

An hour or so passes in companionable silence, the light streaming through the window going gold with evening.

Diligent student he may be, but his hands are not toughened to the work of doing so much writing by hand, Pagan thinks, as Ajay stops for the third time in as many minutes, swearing and trying to shake the cramps out.

Without even thinking, he reaches out and snags that hand with his own.

“Please, let me,” he murmurs, and Ajay doesn’t pull away.  Ajay lets him dig his thumb into the meat of his palm and massage the muscles there, lets him add his other hand for extra support, Ajay’s hand engulfed in both of his.  Some distant part of his mind enquires as to what the fuck he thinks he’s doing; rule number _one_ is that you don’t touch students…but he blocks that out. 

He doesn’t look at Ajay’s face, instead concentrating solely on his hand.  It’s hurting him, and he can help fix it.  Simple.  If he can keep from looking into his eyes, he can pretend that this is strictly…no, that’s ridiculous.  He’s holding his student’s hand and massaging it as his fingers brush against his pulse point and rest there, stroking gently.  No pretending otherwise.

His heartrate is elevated, Pagan notes distantly.  He’s not even really massaging anymore, just rubbing circles into the skin of his palm with his thumb, warm and with a little rasp of slightly rougher skin across the base of his fingers.  His pulse is picking up, thudding low and warm against Pagan’s other thumb.  It’s the sudden idea that this might be causing him some form of distress that has him looking up and meeting Ajay’s eyes.

 

Ajay is staring at him. 

 

No, that doesn’t even begin to cover it, as Pagan gazes back at him over his glasses.  That look in his eyes is downright heated, sharp and burning and perhaps even a little fierce, like he’s undressing him with his eyes, like he would like nothing more than to lean across this desk and…Ajay flushes a dull brick red and drops his own eyes to stare at their joined hands instead.  Completely caught out at it.  Pagan swallows.

“Dr. Min, I…I’m really…that was totally inappropriate…”  As if the fact that they are practically holding hands is.  While he’s still addressing their linked hands instead of his face, Pagan admires him for owning up to it at all.  He’s not sure he himself would have.

“Well, my dear boy, if you’re going to be looking at me like that, you ought to just call me Pagan.” He laughs, but there’s a tiny shake in it, the merest hint of tremble.  Damn.  He meant it as a joke, he really did, however blurted and seriously inappropriate as well, but Ajay takes it as some kind of an agreement.  He looks into his face this time and nods slowly.

“Ajay.  Call me Ajay,” he says, oddly solemn, and Pagan nods in turn.  A pact, of sorts.  While they are in here, anyway.

“Good, that’s…that’s good,” he says, rather inanely, as they reluctantly separate.  There were maybe five entire seconds where he was sure that Ajay was going to lean across his desk and kiss him.  The shock that reverberates in his gut when he realizes that he would have let him.

Ajay glances at his watch.  “Shit, I’ve got to get going...it’s later than I thought.”  He’s right; it’s nearly six.  Pagan watches, still a little stunned as he packs his things up, feeling something he can’t quite put a name to.  Something warm that doesn’t want to see him go; that much he knows.  He can’t speak for any of the rest of it.

Bag packed, Ajay heads for the door, and Pagan gets up too.

“Well, I guess I’ll see you in the morning…Pagan.  Have a good evening, yeah?” 

Pagan finds himself smiling.  “You too, Ajay.  You too.”  Not really wanting to let him go without touching him again somehow in this new, decidedly less formal paradigm they’re following, he puts out his hand, but Ajay surprises him again by gently pushing it out of the way…as he steps forward into his space and puts his arms around him.

He can’t quite disguise the hitch of his rapidly indrawn breath as Ajay holds him warmly.  A moment of hesitation and then he tucks his own arms around his back, as Ajay’s hand moves up to rest softly against the nape of his neck. 

Now his own heart is probably pounding.  He can’t even remember the last time someone held him like this, simple and warmly affectionate.  Intimate. 

“I’ll see you in the morning,” Ajay says again, this time in a whisper against his ear.  A brush of his nose at his earlobe and he’s pulling away, out of his arms and out of the door, before either of them can do something that they’ll regret.

 

The minutes turn into nearly an hour as Pagan sits alone in his darkened office, trying to make sense of that…whatever it was he felt, when Ajay put his arms around him.  What he feels when they touch, about that _heat_ in Ajay’s eyes.  For him, of all people.

The heart wants what it wants, she’d told him once, when he’d asked her, why me?  You know what I was, what I did.  I know what you are now, she’d said, a good father, a good _man._  

 

But that was before. 

 

He puts his face in his hands and sighs. 

Pagan's heart beats just a little faster when he thinks about Ajay’s strong arms around him, and it occurs to him that it’s been quite awhile since he’s looked at Ajay and thought of her. 

 

***

 

Things are weird between them.  Ajay fully acknowledges this. 

Pleasantly weird, in a simmering, warmly tense kind of way.  Hyperaware of each other’s presence.  During their hours together, he’s started working on the same side of the desk as Pagan.  There’s still plenty of room, but that also puts him in easy, discrete touching distance.  Pagan had looked at him flatly over his glasses when he’d made that move, dragging his chair around, but said nothing.  Not even an hour later, he had reached out and touched Ajay’s knee under the desk, the lightest press of his fingertips. 

He’d left them there for a long time.  Ajay had tried to not think too much about what it meant that he kept imagining that touch firming, and then sliding up his thigh.

He hasn’t tried to hug him again though, as good as that was…but now, before he leaves in the evenings, goodbye is accompanied by some kind of physical contact. Usually Pagan will squeeze his shoulder, or he’ll pat the back of Pagan’s hand…but once Pagan had reached up and threaded his fingers through his hair and tugged very gently, smiling, and let go.  Maybe a silent commentary on the fact that he needs a haircut?  Nonetheless, it had made goosebumps pop out all over him, a pleasured shiver. 

Neither of them say a word about it, in any case.

This continues on for a couple of weeks, them touching each other and never once mentioning it, but they talk about everything else under the sun; the relative merits of every early Pink Floyd album, Pagan’s weird obsession with Bollywood music, which he finds he also likes, what Pagan dismissively calls ‘that dreamy navel-gazing pop shit’ but keeps asking Ajay for more of, books they’ve read, food they enjoy, Ajay’s awful classmates. 

“God, _Rabi Ray._   D’you know what he fuckin’ told me the other day, after class?” Ajay had said.  He had finally figured out what the guy’s name actually was.  Pagan had leaned forward, his dark eyes shining like nothing on earth was as important in that moment as his dumb story, something that never fails to give him butterflies. 

“Oh?  Do tell, my boy.  What wisdom did our _dear_ Mr. Rana wish to impart?”

“He…he got a job with Campus Radio.”  Hard to even get it out without laughing.  “As a DJ.  They’re going to actually _put him on the air._ Rabi Fuckin’ Rana, the Shitlord of Room 146B.”

And something about him calling Rabi ‘The Shitlord’ had set Pagan off, got him tickled in that way that happens sometimes even if the joke’s not all that funny…but Pagan had laughed until he _wheezed_ , until he was trying to wipe tears without fucking up his makeup. 

Pure sunshine in Ajay’s stomach, to hear him laugh like that.  So hard not to just grab a fistful of his shirt collar and drag him in.  He’d actually folded his arms tightly to keep himself from doing it.

Pathetic.  They’re both pathetic, Ajay thinks, both of them tripping over the fucking elephant inhabiting Pagan’s cozy office…until he gets a text from him on one of his class evenings.

 

  _6_ _:14 pm – Ajay, are you free right now?_

  _6:15 pm – Yeah just got done what’s up_

_6:15 pm – Oh good, good!  Meet me on_

_the sixth floor of the Science Building,_

_by the stairwell.  There’s something I_

_want to show you_

 

When Ajay gets there Pagan is waiting for him, wearing his coat and pacing a little.  Nerves or simple impatience, he can’t tell, but he clasps Ajay’s shoulder in greeting with a charming little smile. 

“Back here, my boy,” Pagan says, leaving Ajay to wonder just what in the hell is going on, since ‘back here’ turns out to be a dark, recessed area behind the stairwell.  A metal ladder is bolted to the wall, and when he looks up he realizes that the gold and orange-streaked square above him is the sky, the hatch to the roof thrown open wide.  “Up you go, and watch your head,” Pagan whispers beside him. 

At first he thinks it’s the sunset that Pagan wants him to see, as he climbs out onto the flat roof; it’s glorious, the whole sky a swirl of pinks and purples and golds, edging into cooler colors as the sun sinks behind them.  But he realizes that the sunset is just an added bonus, since Pagan has set up a large telescope at the edge of the roof, along with two lawn chairs.  Between the chairs is a small cooler with ice, four long-neck bottles of beer poking out of it.  Ajay takes in this scene, so carefully prepared, and thinks _date_.  But fuck if he’s going to say that out loud in case it’s not, or if that jinxes it somehow. 

Ajay settles for the safe route. “Man, it’s awfully pretty up here.”

“It is,” Pagan agrees.  “But what I asked you up here to see is the moon, when it rises.  This particular full moon in October always looks larger than it does any other time of the year, and, well…it’s quite a sight, I assure you.  I always bring the telescope up here to watch it, and…I thought perhaps you might like to see it too.”

Fuck, it _is_ a date.  Or a date-like activity; something he likes and wants to share with him.

Ajay swallows.  “Yeah, that sounds awesome.”

Pagan motions for him to come and sit down as he does so himself, lowering himself into his chair with a sigh.  Ajay does the same, wondering how weird it would make it if he moved the cooler and scooted their chairs together.  As it is, if he stretches a bit, their knees might touch.

“It won’t be too much longer,” Pagan says, as the light fades and the stars begin to come out, one by one.  He seems content to lean his head against the back of his chair and watch the sky over their heads.  Ajay is content to watch him, or at least his silhouette.  He reaches for a beer, more to give his hands something to do than anything else because shit, he wants to touch him somehow, so badly…wants to reach for his hand and tangle their fingers together, wants to run a hand into his hair, wants to pull him in, and…

Ajay breathes, breathes and sips at his beer.  It’s cold and good, even though it’s kind of chilly out here.  “You want one?”

“Oh yes, thank you,” and as he passes it damn if their fingers don’t touch, Pagan’s brushing over his knuckles in what is practically a caress.  He can’t tell if he meant to do it or not.  Either of them. 

“Ah, here we go!”  Pagan says suddenly, bright and cheerful as he gazes at the eastern sky, and as Ajay looks he can see a dark red glow that’s rapidly brightening along the horizon, almost ominous.  Pagan gets up to stand at the edge of the roof with his beer and he gets up too, just as the edge of the moon breaks free of the horizon.

Ajay stares, dumbfounded. 

It looks _enormous,_ so different from the small silver disk he’s used to seeing.  Huge, and orange, and so close it’s like he could touch it.  How has he gone his entire life not knowing it could look like that?  He must have a stupid look on his face because Pagan chuckles at him.  “Quite a sight, as promised, hmm?”

“Yeah, yeah, it sure is…”  It’s pretty amazing.

They watch it rise together, and when it pulls free of the tree line Pagan sets his beer down and steps over to the telescope, fiddling with dials. 

“Here, come and see,” Pagan says, and the excitement in his voice is doing fluttery things to his own insides.  He leans over the telescope and Pagan shows him where to look, and as he peers into the eyepieces he gasps…because it’s like he’s suddenly standing on another world.  He’s in a desert lit in oranges and peaches and golds, like the sunset, except the sky is black and star-shot; so many stars.  Amazing doesn’t begin to cover it. 

“Fuck,” he swears, low and reverent. 

“I know,” Pagan says, low and reverent too.  “I can never get enough of looking at it, myself.  They call this the Peary Crater, you can see the edge of it, just there.  Some parts of it are always in shadow…”  He’s close enough that his breath is brushing the edge of his ear.  Ajay shivers a little…and then Pagan’s head is against his, as he nudges Ajay to the side so they can both look through an eyepiece.  It’s not quite as realistic as when he was looking with both eyes but he likes the feeling of him watching as well, the two of them explorers on another planet and taking in the same sights. 

“I want to show you something else,” Pagan says softly, “but I’ll have to move it a bit, to the other side of the crater.  It can be a little disorienting…”  And sure enough, when Pagan moves the knobs the view swings up dizzily.  He doesn’t feel like he’s going to fall or anything, but before he can talk himself out of it or overthink it he wraps an arm around Pagan’s waist.

When the image steadies and refocuses, Ajay’s gazing at a gigantic mountain that just seems to keep going up and up, glowing gold against the black sky. 

“The mountain itself doesn’t have a name, but the astronomers call it the peak of eternal light.  A rather flowery way to say that it’s so tall and so close to the pole that it’s always illuminated by the sun, all the year ‘round.”  Ajay can feel him shrug a little.  “A bit melodramatic, perhaps…but awesome all the same.”  His cheek brushes against Ajay’s, with the tiniest rasp of stubble.  “Nothing like it on our world.” 

They stay there, just drinking in the sight until bending over and looking through one eye starts to get uncomfortable.  Ajay straightens up and feels his spine pop.  He still has one arm draped loosely around Pagan’s waist, and when Pagan straightens up as well Ajay impulsively pulls him into his arms, just…wanting to. 

Immediately he thinks he may have made a mistake though, because he doesn’t stiffen up, exactly, but he doesn’t relax into him either, doesn’t put his arms around him too, like he did before.  He waits another second and lets him go, lets his arms drop and steps back, staring down at his feet with a little prickle of anxiety replacing that warm fluttering in his stomach. 

Pagan turns away from him altogether and makes it maybe two, three steps away before he stops.  He looks back at Ajay but he can’t see his expression in the shadows, only his pale hair catching glints of that orange-gold light.  He stops and wavers, like he can’t put even that much distance between them…and then he’s surging back in three quick strides and engulfing him in his arms.  “Damn it,” he whispers somewhere near Ajay’s ear.  “Damn it.”

If their lips touch, they’ll be lost, Ajay realizes; there will be no stopping this…whatever it is.  And god, he wants that; in this moment, he wants that so much, wants his hands on his bare skin, wants…just _wants_ , sudden and sharp and hot, suddenly on the cusp of doing something crazy.  It doesn’t matter that he’s never kissed another man in his life, never touched one like this…doesn’t matter.  He’ll drag Pagan down right here on this fucking rooftop and figure it out, as he feels Pagan’s hands tremble minutely against his back.  Probably shaking for the same reasons his are, with the effort of not skimming one up the back of his head and pulling him in, not skimming the other one down and cupping him through his trousers.

Ajay lays his own head against Pagan’s shoulder and just breathes, breathes in the smell of beer and wool and aftershave, the clean warm smell of his skin. 

Struck by a thought, he brushes his fingers across the front of his coat and slides his hand in between the gaps in the buttons, going slow so that Pagan doesn’t get the wrong idea, that he’s trying to pull his clothes off or something.  He finds the buttons of his waistcoat and undoes just one, creating a gap just big enough to get his hand in, and then his fingers are against the silk of his shirt, warm from his body.  Again, he undoes one button, slow and careful…and spreads his fingers against the velvety, heated skin of his belly as Pagan sucks in a breath. 

This…this is enough.  If he can have this, he can stop himself from going further, from seeking his mouth with his own.  Might even be able to stop Pagan, if he’s the one who breaks first and decides he can’t stand the tension anymore. 

 

Maybe. 

 

He breathes, and eventually that sharp heat beating in his blood calms to something merely warm, softer and warm.  Comfortable, to be here like this, in the circle of his strong arms, himself touching the bare skin of his stomach.  He yawns and muffles it in the collar of Pagan’s coat.  He only slept maybe three hours after studying for his math test last night and it’s catching up to him.

“My poor boy, you’re worn out, aren’t you?  You’ve been working much too hard…come and sit down.  Yes, that’s right.  Do you want another beer?”  And it’s Pagan who is pushing the cooler out of the way with the toe of one shiny shoe and dragging the chairs together.

“I didn’t finish my last one,” he says, and makes a completely embarrassing sound when Pagan lets go of him unexpectedly, a tired and needy kind of sound that he absolutely didn’t mean to make as he tucks up in the chair, his face burning.  But then Pagan’s back with their unfinished beers, settles into his own chair and pulls Ajay to him with an arm around his shoulders, inviting him to rest his head against him again. 

They watch the huge moon together and it grows brighter and brighter gold as it rises in the sky, and his eyelids grow heavier and heavier, until they slide shut.  He wakes a little, but not enough to be able to open them when soft, heavy wool is laid over him, smelling warmly of Pagan.  Such a good smell, he thinks as he drifts off again.

 

Ajay wakes more than an hour later with a crick in his back and a sore rib from where the arm of the chair was digging in, his head still pillowed on Pagan’s shoulder.  Still three-fourths asleep, he glances at the illuminated face of his watch…and realizes he has less than ten minutes to catch the last train.

“Shit… _shit!!”_ He throws off Pagan’s coat and grabs his bag and bolts across the rooftop and to the hatch, down the ladder, down the stairs and is out the front door of the Science Building before he wakes up enough to realize that he didn’t say goodbye, or thank you, or _anything._   He glances at his watch again, and if he runs he’ll just about make it, he really truly didn’t have time for goodbyes.  He shouldn’t have fallen asleep, but that…that was wonderful.  He looks up to the roof in hope…and sure enough there’s the tiny figure of Pagan looking down at him, head and shoulders silvered by moonlight.  He raises a hand, and Ajay waves in return as he takes off running up the sidewalk, a little knot of longing in his chest. 

 

_9:16 pm – that was amazing, thank you_

_so much for bringing me up there_

_9:17 pm – You’re all right though?_

_Everything’s all right?  You left in_

_such a hurry, I wondered_

  _9:17 pm – Yeah I’m really sorry_

_I didn’t mean to fall asleep,_

_I looked at my watch and_

_I realized I was gonna_

_miss the last train_

_9:18 pm - I feel bad that I didn’t_

_get to tell you goodnight Pagan._

_And thank you_

_9:19 pm – it’s quite all right, you were_

_excellent company even asleep ;)_

_But you’re safe and sound now?_

_You made the train in time?_

_9:20 pm – Yeah all safe and sound_

_I’ll be home in a little while_

_9:21 pm – Good, good…take care, and_

_I’ll see you tomorrow_

_9:21 pm – Yeah you too._

_Goodnight Pagan_

_9:22 pm – Goodnight, Ajay_

Even with his other warmly tangled and slightly confusing feelings about Pagan set aside, it’s a nice feeling that there’s somebody out in the world that gives a shit about what happens to him.  To not be so utterly alone.

 

He hopes that Pagan feels that too.

  _9_ _:24 pm – be careful driving home okay_

 

_9:25 pm - I will, dear boy.  I will_

 

 

 

 ***


	4. Evasions

***

 

They have unspoken rules about in-office contact.

Only in Pagan’s office and only under the desk, just in case someone should walk in, as unlikely as it is. Hands, forearms, elbows, knees are permitted. Eye contact is generally, but not universally discouraged.

If he rests his hand on his own knee, Ajay will park his hand beside his and rest one finger on the back of it. It’s frankly ridiculous, but actually holding his hand, interlacing their fingers, feels both much too intimate and not nearly enough. Ajay’s had his fingers on the bare skin of his stomach, after all, but holding his hand is strange?

Pagan’s trying to parse out why that is in his head, as he and Ajay spend another companionable evening together in his office, him idly rolling his pen back and forth across his papers. Perhaps it’s the lack of other contact. If they were to do…other things, it might feel natural to reach out and hold his hand. As he warmly muses on what those other things might be, he realizes that the three cups of coffee he’s had throughout the afternoon are catching up to him. He’s also, paradoxically, due for a refill, as he peers into his empty cup and tosses it into the waste paper basket.

In his preoccupation with the task at hand, he makes a dangerous miscalculation. He loves that pen, couldn’t force himself to stop using it…but he’s always careful to not leave it lying around Ajay either. However, he forgets, this one time, to pick it up and tuck it in his pocket.

“Restroom, I’ll be right back,” he murmurs at Ajay’s curious look, pulling the door almost shut behind him. With the door in the way, and his back turned, there’s no way he could have seen Ajay cock his head at it, how it gleams attractively in the lamplight. No way he could have seen him pick it up, and it would have been too late anyway as he admires the heft of it.  And then his handsome face paling as he reads the inscription on it, his mother’s words: _‘With all my love, Ishwari.’_

No, there’s no way that Pagan could have observed Ajay’s profound shock at seeing those words, followed quickly by raw anger when he works out that he’s been lied to yet again.

 

When Pagan returns four minutes later and elbows the door open with a “Thought you might like a coffee, my boy, I can never remember how you take it but I have some creamer and sugar in my pocket,” a paper cup in each hand, it’s to an empty office. Empty, except for a few papers scattered on the floor that Ajay left behind in his haste to escape.

 

***

 

When his alarm goes off the next morning, Ajay seriously considers staying home. But he can’t justify it; there’s nothing _wrong_ with him, he’s not sick, unless you count the confused, hot anger rolling around in his stomach. He forces himself out of bed but skips breakfast. Can’t handle it.

In class he doesn’t say a word, just keeps his eyes locked on the top of his desk, his notebook. He doesn’t even glance at Pagan, can’t stand to look at him this morning even though he can feel Pagan’s eyes on him, probably concerned. Just…can’t.

“See me after class please, Mr. Ghale.”

Amita snickers from somewhere in the back, but Ajay won’t give anyone the satisfaction of seeing how those words make his insides turn, everything raw inside. He sits ramrod-straight in his chair but studiously refuses to look up. Won’t give Pagan the satisfaction either.

Class seems to go on forever, but finally Pagan checks the time on his phone and wraps it up and waves the rest of the class out. He looks at his hands as Pagan gathers his papers, a quiet shuffle.

“You left these in my office yesterday, and I wanted to return them.” Ajay looks up enough to see him offering him his assignment sheets back. He takes them and shoves them back in his bag without really looking. “You seemed to have left in a hurry, perhaps? And you were awfully quiet today.” He smiles a little. “I’ve just gotten used to hearing your voice in class, I suppose.”

He pulls out a chair and sits at one of the student’s desks across the aisle from Ajay, his attendance sheets and his pen in one hand. Their knees are almost touching.

“My boy, is there something the matter? You can tell me, you know. You can tell me anything,” he says. Low, quiet, gentle. It just feels like salt on that raw soreness inside him.

Ajay reaches out and yanks that fucking pen right out of his hand, not really caring if he’s rough, and turns it so that the inscription is facing Pagan.

“You mind explaining what the fuck this is?” He looks right into Pagan’s eyes, and he can tell that whatever it was that he was expecting, it wasn’t this. Undisguised shock.

Silence, for several beats.

“I…I knew your mother,” he says, a little rustily. Ajay rolls his eyes.

“Well, that’s pretty fuckin’ obvious. You wanna go into a little more detail with that?”

When he doesn’t, Ajay sighs angrily. “When we were in your office last night, I picked up your pen and looked at it. Maybe I shouldn’t have messed with your stuff, but…” Pagan still doesn’t say anything, downcast eyes on his hands, which are neatly folded in his lap. “When were you going to _tell_ me? How did you even meet her? And she loved you? Like, was _in love_ with you? None of this makes any sense.”

He examines Pagan’s face, the set of his mouth…and it dawns on him. “You weren’t going to fucking tell me at all, were you?” It comes out all weird and strained. He doesn’t want to believe it of him. But the longer he’s quiet like this, the more it feels like the truth.

“Ajay, I…”

“No, save it.” He pushes himself to his feet, shoves past Pagan’s knees. “I don’t wanna hear it. Mom never told me shit either. Oh, and I asked. When I was a kid, I would ask and ask. Where do we come from? Why don’t I have a dad? What happened to him? Why the secrets? The lies?” He suddenly feels a lump in his throat and has to swallow it down. “So…yeah. Fuck it, whatever. I’ll see you in class.”

He almost makes the hallway when Pagan’s quiet voice stops him. He can’t help it; he has to stop and listen. Furious that his feet won’t just carry him out that door.

“Which way would have had you less angry with me? Hmm? To not tell you at all, and pray you never found out so we could have…this, whatever this is between us? Or for me to tell you that we were in love and lived together for two years, and that I broke up your parents’ marriage, such as it was? That your father went mad? That I ruined all of her happiness? That I couldn’t…well.” He clears his throat, harshly. “Which way would have been better?” His eyes…Ajay has to look away.

“I just wish you’d have been honest with me. You’re one to talk to us about _ethics_.”

“And yet, you still haven’t answered my question. Here you are, furious with me all the same.”

Pagan’s right. He has no idea. He would have been angry either way, any way.

And the rage and helplessness surrounding this topic, that Ajay’s been pushing down for years, suddenly hits some boiling point.

“Fuck you, Pagan. _Fuck you_ , and I can see now why she left your sorry ass, why you weren’t around. Why I was all alone when I had to take care of her while she was dying.” And Pagan recoils like Ajay slapped him.

Even now it hurts, that he’s put that expression on Pagan’s face, and he instinctively wants to reach for him, pull him close and comfort him, like a fucking moron. He’s done, so done.

Now, finally his feet will move, and he lets them take him out the door, down the hall, away from that look in Pagan’s eyes.

 

That day lasts forever, lasts and lasts in a hot haze of anger and pain, so enraged that he completely misses the speculative looks that his art history professor keeps throwing his direction. He keeps his head down and tries to tune the world out, just…not able to cope.

It doesn’t occur to him until hours and hours later, when he’s on the train home, that it’s possible that Pagan isn’t even the real focus of his anger.

After he walks the two blocks back home to his little apartment and he’s gone and gotten a cold drink and is sitting quietly with it in the kitchen, he admits that he’s not exactly being fair. That fury is still simmering in him…how fucking _dare_ he…but at the same time, he gave Pagan no time to explain anything. He just…blew up in his face.

Now that he looks back, he can kind of see how he’s tried to make the best of a complicated situation. Those little touches they’ve been sharing, they’re absolutely not platonic. He knows good and well they’re not. Not from his side, or Pagan’s either. Both of them trembling with the effort of holding back…but he had no complex feelings about Pagan, at least before today. No history there; he’s just…attracted. Just wants him, more and more by the day.

But for Pagan…a thought strikes him. _He’s mourning her too._ And he went and threw that in his face. God, he’s such a fucking prick sometimes. He rubs at his pounding head, not able to get that look on Pagan’s face out of his mind.

And he himself looks so much like Ishwari. What must that be like, for him? Is he attracted because of that, or in spite of it? And if they were to give in, and were caught at it….hell to pay. Mostly for Pagan. Administration will come down on him like a load of fucking bricks, for fraternizing with a student in one of his classes. He has no illusions about that.

It also occurs to him that him and Pagan are the only ones the other has left. He’s the only person left in his life that knows anything about his parents, about all of that stuff that his mom would never, ever talk about. Maybe it makes a weird, fucked-up fated kind of sense that he would find Pagan all these years later and want to be with him. Want to kiss him, run his fingers into his hair…

…god. That sharp heat reverberates through him like it does every time he thinks about him. Sharp and hot and followed by a little ache of longing. And knowing he was with Mom does zero to diminish it.

Ajay paces, paces, keeps picking up his phone to message Pagan…and say what, exactly? He doesn’t particularly want to stay inside, but he doesn’t have anywhere else to go. But his little apartment is starting to feel distinctly stifling and he decides to just go for a walk, out in the chill October air, wandering the streetlamp-lit sidewalks with no destination in mind.

Just moving and trying not to think, no way of knowing that across town Pagan himself is in the same state, is down in his basement gym lifting weights twice as heavy as his usual despite being on his sixth bourbon. When that doesn’t work to soothe him, he has two more and collapses on the couch, just watching the ceiling spin and also trying his best not to think, or feel.

 

The morning sunlight wakes him early as usual, but Ajay isn’t going to school today, no. The fact that the hours he spends hanging out with Pagan in his office is technically paid work pricks at him a little, but there’s no way he’s going in there to sit awkwardly. He can imagine it now: tension so thick you could cut it with a knife. The tension of what he said, all that anger…Pagan’s probably furious with him. He would be. That other tension that’s been growing by the day. But maybe should just…march his ass in there and get it over with. Do something about it, one way or the other. Clear the fucking air.

The fact that he hasn’t pisses him off even more.

He lasts until the late afternoon, until he can’t stand it anymore and takes a shower and gets dressed and walks to catch the train, unable to force himself to stay away any longer. Life is too short, his mind keeps reminding him. Life is too short for this dancing around bullshit.

She taught him that.

Once he’s there though, it’s like he can’t force his legs to work right, to go to Pagan, to take him where he needs to be. Like a fucking coward. He wanders out onto the quad and sits down on a bench, the evening shadows growing long and throwing the spiky shadows of leafless trees across the grass. It’s getting cold and dark but he could probably use some cooling off. His skin is too sensitive even to the fabric of his shirt, bursting at the seams with everything all mixed up inside of him.

That feeling only grows stronger as he lifts his gaze to the darkened back side of Hewlett Hall, to where one lamp burns with golden light on the third floor, scraggly plants on the sill.

 

***


	5. Drive

***

 

Well, he went and bloody well fucked that up with Ajay, didn’t he?

He’d rolled into work just after eleven, red-eyed and still perhaps smelling very faintly of bourbon over his toothpaste, but that doesn’t matter. He’s here, bathed and groomed and with a couple of ibuprofen in his stomach that should mercifully kick in at any minute. Thank god he only has office hours on Thursdays and has nearly nearly twenty hours before he has to deal with that class again. Before he has to see Ajay again.

He has no illusions that Ajay will be here today. Probably never again.

As the day drags on into the afternoon, and he tries to find something to occupy himself with, he realizes that he had no idea how good for him Ajay’s presence was. Instead of doing productive things, he used to spend his time drinking endless cups of bad staff room coffee and reading trashy novels. Now he can’t even do that; too distracted to read and the three sips of coffee he had sits like liquid lead in his stomach.

Pathetic.

While Pagan’s checking his email for what feels like the sixtieth time that day, his office door slams open. It rebounds off the bookshelf with a resounding clap that threatens several piles of journals and the contents of his filing cabinet, so hard that it bangs itself shut again with a rattle in the frame. Startled, he jerks his head up…and stares right into Ajay’s angry, narrowed eyes. He can feel his own narrowing in response.

“Can I help you,” he says icily, but Ajay is sliding around the corner of the big desk, is almost on him, and the look on his face has him grasping his pen tightly, old instincts kicking in along with the adrenaline. If Ajay is furious enough to attack him he’ll defend himself with it, he has time to think, half out of his chair when Ajay gets both hands on his shoulders and shoves him back down. Hard.

His lips on Pagan’s are remarkably gentle in contrast.

If he’d kissed him with that same fierceness he could have shoved him away, it would have been easy. If he’d used bruising force, bitten at his mouth, he would have gotten a hand in his shirtfront and sent him ass over tits back across the desk and out the goddamn door. He has a hand twisted in the front of his jacket, all ready to do it.

But the overwhelming sweetness of Ajay’s gentle mouth on his, soft lips brushing and nudging, just the tip of his tongue teasing his bottom lip…

…it absolutely undoes him. There’s none of that hot anger in that kiss, none at all, and without thinking he’s pulling him in closer with that fist in his jacket and his other hand is running into his hair as Ajay slides into his lap, his hands against his throat, his nape, brushing warmly at whatever bare skin he can reach.

“I’m sorry Pagan…I’m so, so sorry,” Ajay whispers against his mouth, all his anger gone. “I…”

“It’s all right,” he murmurs. “It’ll be all right, you had every right to be angry, we’ll figure things out…” He’s losing track of what he’s even saying, why he’s saying it, as Ajay’s mouth is on his again.

By the time he thinks of how much they really, _really_ oughtn’t be doing this Pagan’s already lost, melting against him and he can’t put a stop to it, can’t lift his hands away, can’t think, can’t even get a breath. He’s gasping and breathing him in like he’s drowning and Ajay is the very air, can’t stop as Ajay’s tongue slides softly against his, and he wants this so badly he can feel his eyes burn, his throat burn, all the way down to the bottom of his lonely, battered, pathetic heart. Has wanted him for months now, perhaps even…

...no, his mind shies from it.

A distant part of him informs him just how idiotic, how utterly _insane_ this is, but he’s frozen in place as Ajay’s big hands work at his shirt buttons.

Too much and not enough, not nearly enough as his mouth is on Ajay’s throat, his pulse throbbing against his tongue, fluttering fast as Ajay’s fingers skim across one of his nipples, shocking a low moan out of him. Too fast, and much, much too slow, he needs, he needs…he doesn’t know what in the hell he needs, or what he’s even doing as he works both hands under Ajay’s ass in his lap and picks him up, just stands up with him.

Ajay’s arms go around his neck and cling sweetly as he deposits him on top of the desk, everything hot and hazed with arousal. His goddamned hands won’t stop trembling; he’s shaking all over, like a teenager, like a man who hasn’t touched or been touched by another fucking human being in more than a decade.

Completely, utterly lost in it.

He clutches at Ajay’s belt, trying to get it unbuckled and the stiff leather isn’t co-operating as Ajay’s mouth finds his again, hands roughly shoving his shirt halfway off along with the waistcoat, then gentle again, rubbing his neck and shoulders gently.

That combination of him being rough with him and then soft is going to drive him mad, it absolutely is, as he finally gets Ajay’s belt forced back through the keeper. The button and zipper of his denims are easier and Ajay helps him, both of them near frantic by now but that small part of his mind that is not overwhelmed by a roaring conflagration of lust is urging him _stop, you can still stop this, you can still come back from this, you’ve only really kissed him, your student, your twenty years younger student for fuck’s sake…her son._

 _Her son._ That finally gets through; he hesitates at that, hesitates for a still, quivering moment.

Ajay is the one to break that moment of his indecision. Ajay’s hand is on the back of his head as he wriggles his denims and underwear down his strong thighs with the other, his jutting hardness an invitation, and Pagan can _smell_ him, Jesus Christ, and his mouth actually waters for it as he swallows hard.

“Please,” Ajay says. _“Please.”_

That little plea tugs at him, but it’s his smell that undoes him in the end; heated skin and soap and sharp clean arousal, so warm and good that Pagan jams his head into Ajay’s lap and sinks down on him right there and then, pulled down like gravity. He wraps his arms around him and his hands grip the top of his ass, his lower back as Ajay grabs at his hair with a gasp. He clenches his hand, pulling a little, which Pagan doesn’t mind in the slightest but he loosens his hold right away and runs his fingers through it instead. Sweet, gentle boy.

The heat of him, the heavy weight of him on his tongue is overwhelming, and this he certainly hasn’t done for far longer than a decade, or even two but it’s rapidly coming back to him. Ajay tastes every bit as good as he smells, and when he adjusts he finds he can take him in a bit deeper, earning himself a moan that also forces one out of him…god. He’s so wound up he could probably come just from this, straining so hard in his trousers it hurts a bit. Not that it matters.

He figured Ajay would lean back to give him better access, perhaps even thrust up into his mouth a little, but what he does is curl up around Pagan’s head in his lap, an unexpected intimacy. He runs his fingers down the short hair on the back of his head, along his nape, even pets his ears, lingering across the stud in the left one. Touching as much of him as he can reach, learning him even as he groans low in his throat and pants, hot little breaths that ghost warmly across the back of Pagan’s neck.

Ajay is already so close, he can tell, trembling under his arms, his hands, the muscles of his belly quivering against the top of his head; and how long has Ajay been wanting him to do this very thing? Ajay throbs against his tongue, shakes under him, and Pagan shifts unconsciously and the friction of his own thighs brushing against his erection nearly undoes him. He moans and that extra vibration has Ajay clenching his whole body, fingers gently scrabbling against the back of Pagan’s head in warning.

 _Oh no, not going anywhere,_ Pagan has enough time to think before Ajay curls even tighter around him and comes hard, throbbing hotly against his tongue with little panting gasps and Pagan swallows around him, tongue still working against the underside and determined to get every last drop. Savoring the taste of him, warm and salty and bitter and good.

Ajay relaxes under him, still with the occasional little pleasured spasm as he comes down from it and Pagan doesn’t want to move, doesn’t want to have to let go but he’s probably getting too sensitive and…

…the sound of a key in the door lock.

Pagan’s arms are thankfully still around Ajay as he just jerks him backwards and thankfully he doesn’t cry out in surprise as Pagan wraps him up in his arms and rolls them both under the big desk, into the heavy shadows underneath it. Has to be the custodian; that means it’s far later than Pagan thought, but she’s the only one that has a key to his office. The wastepaper basket is her goal, as she flips on the big overhead light that they both instinctually flinch from, and…oh fuck. The basket is somewhere around their feet and she’s going to come searching for the fucking thing, she’s going to come around the corner of his desk and here he is with his shirt hanging off of one arm, obviously tented trousers, and a _student_ in his arms with his denims and boxers halfway down his shapely thighs…

Ajay saves him in his moment of sheer, raw panic by silently toeing the basket out into the aisle away from them, just before she would have seen it moving. They both watch, trying to breathe silently as a hand descends, and the basket moves out of sight. The thunk of the plastic slamming against the big can on her cart is shockingly loud, and then the hand comes back into sight again, placing the basket back on the floor. A shuffle of feet on the carpet and the lights snap off. The door clicks closed.

Pagan lets out his held breath with a _whoosh_ just as Ajay’s big hand descends on his crotch and all other considerations magically evaporate. His body flushes all over and he realizes they’re stretched out here full-length against one another as Ajay works his belt loose and…

God. Pagan clutches hard at him as Ajay makes a sound like a growl and jams his hand under the waistband of his underwear. The moment his hot fingers are on him he’s rutting into his fist without any sort of finesse, he can’t help it; just raw, blunt, mindless animal pleasure. Seeking release.

He lasts five strokes before he shudders and jerks and comes messily all over the both of them, starbursts behind his closed eyelids and trying to muffle the sounds he’s making against the side of Ajay’s throat. Ajay’s scent in his nose, his taste in his mouth, as he quivers in place and tries not to pass out. Ajay shifts against him and presses a little kiss against his ear. “Fuck, you’re so beautiful like this…”

As he drifts in the dark of his closed eyelids, his hand still wadded in the front of Ajay’s jacket.

A sense of mounting but languid horror is what brings him back, lying limp on the slightly dusty carpet under his desk. Now comes the regret, the shame, the fear, like it was just waiting to ambush him. What in the everliving _fuck_ had he been thinking?

Well, he hadn’t, that was the problem…hadn’t been thinking at all. Not with his brain, anyway. Not the first time he’s made that mistake either, but it’s also one he hasn’t made since he had a driver’s license and his own bank account. He rolls over and puts his hands over his burning face. Perhaps if he lies here for long enough, Ajay will just go, he’s probably mortified, had come in here still furious and it had turned to…

Arms around him. Ajay’s slightly whiskery face nuzzles against his.

“Pagan, no…don’t do this. Don’t be like this. I’m not some kid that you have to protect or something, or who doesn’t know what he wants. I’m nearly thirty, for godssakes.” His tone is almost airy, but Pagan can hear the underlying tension. “Months, _months_ we’ve been dancing around this. I just…got so sick of it, so if anybody’s to blame it’s me, I came on _way_ strong. I kissed you, remember? Climbed right in your lap. And then you didn’t do anything I wasn’t begging you to do, seriously begging. Holy shit, that was amazing. You’re amazing.”

Pagan sighs, lowers his hands. “Ajay, it’s not about that, the…desiring or not desiring,” he says heavily. “I’m your professor, and I should have put a stop to it. Like you said, months ago, I should have put a stop to it…and I didn’t. That was my responsibility, not yours…and I apologize for failing in that responsibility. For failing you.” There. Nice and steady, as his guts churn in anxiety.

A tense silence.

“Don’t give me that bullshit,” Ajay says, flat and hard. “Martyrdom doesn’t fucking suit you.” Pagan looks over at him, but before he can even begin to process that, Ajay goes on much more quietly. Almost a whisper. “I know that this wasn’t the smartest idea, I know that. But maybe, maybe I read things way wrong, the situation…do you regret it?” He seems to be asking about more than the obvious; _do you regret ever letting me in, letting me use your name, this time we’ve been spending together…me? Do you regret me?_

When Pagan doesn’t immediately answer, he lets out a fluttery little sigh against Pagan’s face in the near dark, and moves away to get up, to leave, to never speak of it again. Ajay will do that, for his sake; he knows he will. They can go on much as they did before, pretending this never happened, and isn’t that what he wants? Some things will have to change, of course; no more late evenings working together, no more little touches, back to Dr. Min, Mr. Ghale. Him going home at night to his lonely little house to pretend that he knows nothing about how Ajay’s tongue feels against his own, the way he trembled against him, what it felt like to buck into his palm and come so hard that he saw stars, with Ajay’s endearment in his ears. Exactly what he tastes like.

Pretend he knows nothing of any of it.

Throw up all the old walls, like he has for the last twenty years…and die by inches for the next twenty, in an endless parade of exams and staff meetings and quarterly reviews and nightly bourbon and passing out in front of the television set. His neglected heart twists hard in his chest, aching.

“Ajay,” he tries to say, before he’s gone for good, but it comes out a rough croak. He swallows, and tries again, as Ajay stares at him with…god, with resignation, and something that looks like some species of sorrow. “Ajay,” and this time his voice is rusty, but usable, “I seriously regret the position that this…that this thing between us puts us both in. That, I regret. That neither of us are free. You have your reputation to maintain, and I have, well…my continued employment to maintain.” Pagan reaches for him, pulls him close, gazes deep into his beautiful, devastatingly familiar eyes. Haunting eyes. “But you…oh, my dearest boy, my darling, you I absolutely do not regret. Never. Never, ever think it of me.”

And this time, it’s him that’s leaning in and claiming Ajay’s mouth with his, gently, gently.

 

As all lovers must do, they eventually have to untangle themselves and figure out the clothing situation. Pagan’s shirt was trailing from one arm at the time and so escaped relatively unscathed, but Ajay’s jacket and his own bare stomach got the worst of it. All he can come up with is a handful of paper napkins; woefully, laughably inadequate. In fact, Ajay does laugh, at the look on his face…but it melts into something else, as he leans down and just…laps the come off his belly, tracing the muscles with his hot and silky tongue. His cock twitches in interest.

“Jesus, boy…you’re going to be the death of me,” Pagan says, a little strangled.

“Just wanted to taste you, too,” and Pagan can’t come up with a single thing to say to that, as Ajay runs gentle hands over his bare shoulders, down his biceps, across his chest. “I guess I should quit and let you get dressed, but damn…nobody else knows what you’re hiding under those fancy suits of yours, do they?”

“That’s entirely flattering, but no, they don’t. You’re definitely the only one. And that’s the way it shall remain. No kissing and telling, hmm?”

Luckily Pagan has an extra sweater amongst the collection of coats and scarves that always seem to accumulate in his office, as he’s always forgetting to wear them home again. This he gives to Ajay as he bundles up his jacket and stows it in his bag. Embarrassed, Pagan says, “Please, if there’s a cleaning charge, make sure to give me the bill…”

Ajay laughs again, the sweater halfway over his head. “Don’t worry about it. D’you think I actually own anything that needs to be dry cleaned? I’ll just chuck it in the washer. And I’ll wash this and bring it back to you.” It looks nice on him, Pagan thinks. They’re almost of a size.

“Don’t bother. Keep it, it suits you.” A thought occurs to him. “Just, erm…don’t put it in your dryer. It’s cashmere.”

After a quick stop in the bathroom to wash up, Pagan bemoaning the state of his hair, they walk out the front doors together. It’s late, no one about but the custodial staff, and Ajay checks his watch.

“Shit, later than I thought. I’ll have to hurry but I can still catch the last one...”

“Nonsense,” Pagan replies. “I’ll drive you home. I doubt it’s even out of my way.” This is a blatant lie; he knows good and well it’s not out of his way, since he got into Ajay’s files and googled his address. And it wouldn’t matter, even if it was. Selfishly, he’s not quite ready for their evening to be over.

“Aww, you don’t have to do that, I’m just fine taking the train.”

“Again, nonsense. No reason to spend your money when I have a perfectly good car…please. It would be my pleasure.”

Ajay chuckles. “Gallant _and_ a good lay, shit…”

“Hush, you. Let’s go, it’s fucking cold out here.”

They climb into Pagan’s nice but incredibly professor-standard Volvo, and he pretends to be clueless while Ajay patiently explains the route to his apartment building as they travel down winter-dark streets. Pagan generally drives with his right hand resting on the console gear shift; the car is an automatic, but it’s an old habit of his.

By the third red light, that hand is entangled with Ajay’s on the seat between them.

By the fourth, Ajay’s shaggy head is resting against his shoulder.

“This beats the train by a fuckin’ mile,” Ajay murmurs into the warmth and darkness of the car, and Pagan has to agree. His head being right there makes it easy for him to drop a kiss onto the top of it, dark strands tickling his nose.

The trip is short, and by the end of it both of them wish it were longer. Pagan shuts the car off in the little parking lot of Ajay’s apartment complex and they sit there in silence for a few minutes. Fingers entwined, Ajay’s head against his shoulder still. Pagan lets his own rest there against Ajay’s, while the cooling engine ticks from time to time.

Finally, Ajay stirs against him. “I guess I should be letting you get home.”

Pagan thinks of the dark and cheerless house that’s waiting for him, of flipping on the television to create the illusion of other voices, and the bed that is much, much too big for him alone. Big and cold. He wonders how much bourbon is left in the bottle by his chair. “I suppose I should. Class comes bright and early.”

“Yeah.” With a little smile in his voice, like he’s looking forward to it.

Pagan chuckles. “Well. I shall see you in the morning then.”

“G’night, Pagan.”

“Have a good night, Ajay.”

As Ajay is getting out and rummaging in the backseat for his bag, Pagan rests his hand on the shifter again, noting that his fingers already feel strange without Ajay’s interlaced with them. Ajay slams the back door shut and Pagan puts the car in gear, but before he can back out of the parking space Ajay is at his window. Perplexed, he shoves it back in park and rolls the window down.

“What’s the matter? Did you forget something?”

“Maybe.” And then he sticks his head through Pagan’s window and his mouth is sweet and warm on his, slanted against his lips, his hand cradling Pagan’s face and his thumb brushing his cheekbone. Ajay pulls back a little and rests his forehead against his. “Now it’s goodnight,” he murmurs, his breath brushing against Pagan’s face. He breathes it in.

“Goodnight, darling,” Pagan whispers back, and watches Ajay walking away from him backwards as far as he can, not willing to turn away.

 

The drive home…well. He can’t seem to stop thinking of him, distracted as all hell. He nearly misses the turnoff to his own street. His head says, dangerous, dangerous…well, you both got it out of your systems at least. Now you can go on about your lives. His heart says, would he come here if I asked, would he come and let me feed him and share my bed with me? Is that something he might want…proper sex in a proper bed, and not just a roll on my dusty office carpet?

God. There’s something wrong with him, has to be. It’s probably just…some hormonal thing on Ajay’s part. Maybe he has some fetish for members of the teaching profession, or somehow thinks that rude and sarcastic and nearly fifty is attractive.

No, Ajay’s had his fun, and he’ll move on now and find some more appropriate target for his affections. He just wishes that the thought of it didn’t hurt like it does, sharp and hot. He’ll find another on-campus job, the visits to his office will peter out, and he’ll find himself having lunch alone, just like before. Everything back to normal. It’s for the best, really.

He tells himself all that, but that kiss…his goodnight kiss. Ajay’s long fingers entangled with his.

When he pulls into the driveway of his darkened house, Pagan is no closer to calming his own flighty thoughts. He nearly trips over the newspaper that he forgot to go out and get this morning, has to stoop and retrieve it in its slippery plastic bag. He moves on autopilot as he unlocks the door and drops his keys and wallet into the bowl on the side table and the paper beside it, and is halfway out of his coat when his phone goes off.

Surely not.

Gritting his teeth a little, he forces himself to take the coat off properly instead of merely dumping it on the floor and diving for his phone. Makes himself take it off slowly, carry it to the closet, get a hanger, place it on the rod.

No, he’s going to do one better. He heads upstairs to his bedroom and toes off his shoes, hangs his jacket and waistcoat up, pulls his phone out of his trousers pocket and dumps it on the bed and studiously resists looking at it. He puts his dirty things into the hamper where they go instead of leaving a laundry trail.

He contemplates getting into the shower but that’s the limit of his resolve; he breaks and grabs the fucking thing with greedy hands.

Ajay.

 

_8:57 pm – I’m still wearing your sweater cause_  
_it smells like you, almost like you’re here._  
_Maybe I’ll sleep in it_

_9:04 pm – if you do that, then it won’t smell_  
_like me anymore, it’ll smell like you._  
_Then you’ll have to trade it back_  
_so that I can sleep with it and think about you_

_9:05 pm – sounds like a plan ;)_

 

Pagan lets himself flop back onto the bed. He is so utterly fucked.

After a few minutes, his fingers move without his conscious direction; perhaps he has a brain tumor. It would explain a great many things, as he hits send and lies there with a cold lump in his belly.

_9:08 pm – would you like to come over_  
_sometime, perhaps tomorrow_  
_night after school? I can make dinner_

 

The seconds tick by, and then the minutes. He’s starting to get cold, with no clothes on. Too much, he pushed too much…should have left well enough alone. He ought to take a shower and eat something and just go to bed. He contemplates scotch and television but he’s oddly tired, already sleepy.

Well, perhaps coming so hard you nearly pass out will do that. He rubs his face with a sigh, just as his phone beeps again.

 

_9:14 pm – fuck yeah I thought you’d never ask._  
_That sounds awesome, sorry I drifted off for a minute_

 

The thought of him curled up in bed with his nose buried in Pagan’s sweater, face soft and peaceful against clean white sheets…

 

_9:15 – go to sleep, darling._  
_I’ll see you in the morning,_  
_and in the evening as well_

_9:16 – cant wait, sleep well :)_

_9:17 – You too_

 

In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. The deal was made the moment Ajay flung his office door open, no coming back from it. But if they’re to jeopardize his career and both their reputations…well.

They may as well make it something worth the risk.

After a snack and a hot shower, Pagan drops off to sleep easily and sleeps better than he has in years. And without a drop of liquor.

 

Friday morning’s class is business as usual: keep the Bobbsey Twins from murdering one another, threaten the Shitlord with expulsion for interrupting lecture with all things scatological, try to teach the rest of them something. Ajay keeps his head down for the most part, ostensibly taking notes. He files dutifully out with the rest at the end of class, although a touch slower, so he’s the last one out the door without it being obvious. He looks back over his shoulder with a grin for Pagan, and with nobody else in sight, Pagan can throw him a little wink back.

The rest of the day drags, drags, stupefyingly boring. That is, until 4:30, when he’s pulling into the used car lot a block from campus that is their pre-arranged meeting spot. Ajay opens the passenger-side door and climbs in, tosses his schoolbag into the backseat, and is on best behavior until they’re a few more blocks away from campus.

Once they’re stopped for a red light, Pagan turns a little in his seat.

“I hope you don’t mind stopping at the grocery for some thi…” is all he gets out before Ajay is on him, kissing him breathless throughout the entirety of that stoplight.

“Don’t mind a bit,” Ajay says finally, lips pink and eyes sparkling.

 

Pagan chooses to drive to the grocery store on the other end of town instead of the one near campus, just to be on the safe side, and Ajay pushes the cart while he picks out a nice plump chicken to roast. Pagan sends him after a couple of bottles of white wine, and while he’s off doing that he stops at the pharmacy and picks up other sorts of supplies.

He’s perusing the carrots when Ajay comes back with the bottles. “There was a woman over there…they have like a wine counter thing and she said that this kind was good with chicken. I dunno, I don’t know jack shit about wine, so I just went with it.” He places them in the cart…and freezes when he sees the condoms and lube.

“Oh.”

Pagan keeps his eyes trained on the carrots.

“Well, we don’t need these,” Ajay blurts out, then blushes. “I don’t mean like…what I mean is that I trust you, and it’s…it’s been a few years for me, you know?”

It strikes Pagan that this is a rather surreal conversation to be having in the middle of the produce aisle, as the carrots suddenly seem…unusually phallic. He drops his eyes to the next shelf, but that doesn’t help, as that one contains cucumbers. He gusts a sigh. “I do know, it’s been…well…quite a bit more than a few years, in my case.” _Only ever her, for me. Until now._ But he sure as _fuck_ isn’t going to say that aloud.

“Did you, uh…were you planning on this being like, an exclusive thing?” Pagan can feel his eyes narrowing. Christ, does he seriously think he has _multiple_ people vying for his attentions? Ajay raises his hands in supplication. “Hey, don’t give me that look. I’m just making sure we’re both on the same page. You’re supposed to talk this kind of shit out, right?"  He rubs the back of his shaggy head.  "Want me to put them back?”

Without waiting for his response, Ajay takes the condoms out of the cart with a grin and sets them carefully on top of a stack of bananas. “There!”

“Oh _really,_ Ajay,” but it makes him laugh anyway.

 

***


	6. Playing with Fire

***

 

Pagan’s house is nice, a little two-story brick house on a little one-lane street in a nice little neighborhood. It’s all so weirdly normal, for someone like him…but he’s not sure what it was he was expecting. The house painted bright pink or something? Ajay wonders what the neighbors think of the eccentric guy next door.

They clatter in with the groceries into a small entryway where he toes his shoes off. He was especially careful to pick out socks with no holes that morning.

Pagan takes the bags from him and leads the way through a small living room into a much bigger, nicely furnished kitchen; a lot of stainless steel, big gas range, fancy-looking. He dumps the groceries on the counter haphazardly and then yanks open the fridge door, hunting for something, twitchier than usual…nerves. He’s nervous, Ajay realizes. It’s strangely endearing. He’s a little nervous too, to be honest, a flutter in his stomach; it’s not like he’s ever done this before. Not any of it. He didn’t bother to tell Pagan that, it’s not important. Like he told him in his office, it’s not like he doesn’t know what he wants.

Half wanting to be comforting, half wanting to be comforted, he goes and drapes his arms around Pagan’s waist, presses himself against the long line of his back. Pagan freezes against him, fridge door still open. Ajay extends a finger and swings it shut.

“Easy, we’ve got all evening. Why don’t you show me around first? I’m not all that hungry.” Well, he is hungry but not exactly for roasted chicken, as nice as that sounds. Pagan turns in his arms to face him, just like Ajay hoped he would, leans forward to capture his mouth with his, exactly like Ajay wanted him to.

Was it only last night, that he held Pagan in his arms and kissed him this? That kiss in the car earlier was great, but to be pressed against him full-length, hands free to run along his back and up the back of his head; the feel of short, stubbly hair against his fingers. The skin behind his ears is just as soft as it looks.

It seems like so much longer, way too long to go without touching him, without feeling a little drunk already on the taste and smell of him. They eventually have to break for air, just leaning against each other, Pagan’s head tucked against his.

Time, they have time, a precious commodity.

“Let me go ahead and get it in the oven, at least,” Pagan says, a little muffled against his hair. “It’ll take awhile, you know. You may…hmm…oh, that’s nice,” as Ajay flutters a kiss against his throat, “you may be hungry by then? Very nice, but you have to _stop _that, you’re being such a fucking distraction…” but it comes out like a low and breathy purr that makes goosebumps run up his back. Ajay sighs and steps back, holding him at arm’s length. At the rate they’re going, there won’t be any dinner and he doubts they’ll even make it to the bed. He sucks in a deep breath, lets it out.__

“Okay, show me around and then I’ll help you. I can cut stuff up, if nothing else. Just tell me what to do.”

“There’s really not all that much to see, but very well,” and Ajay slips his hand into his. “Bedrooms are up the stairs, the basement’s down there, I have a sort of gym set up…this is the door to the back garden,” and Pagan swings it open for him. He guesses it’s pretty suburban standard but he finds himself wandering out there anyway. He’s never lived in a place with a yard before, and the late afternoon sun slants down and is gilding everything. Even Pagan’s ratty-looking potted tomatoes look attractive in that gold light.

Other than the pots on the little brick patio, there’s not that much. A tall wooden fence and a long stretch of grass with a stone path that meanders across the yard to a shed shaded by a big tree. It’s the kind of little building you might keep the lawnmower in, or extra potting soil and tools. He imagines Pagan cutting the grass on a hot August day, pushing a mower around in a clean white t-shirt that’s quickly soaked in the heat. How good he’d smell afterwards, fresh clean sweat and sunshine, little bits of fragrant grass stuck to him…

“Do you have to mow a lot, in the summer?” Pagan looks faintly confused by this non-sequitur. “The grass I mean. There’s kind of a lot of it.”

“Oh, no…I usually pay the neighbor boy to cut it.” Of course he does. Pagan cocks his head a little. “Why do you ask?”

Ajay can’t help but grin. “Just curious, that’s all.”

 

Back in the kitchen, he cuts up the vegetables to roast alongside the chicken, trying to get the pieces as even as possible and studiously ignoring Pagan’s warm presence beside him at the counter. He’s currently stuffing their chicken with something green and rubbing butter all over the outside of it. Can’t go wrong with that. He grabs the next thing he needs to chop out of the colander, something that looks kind of like a big white carrot. “I don’t even know what the hell this is,” he mutters to himself. He goes ahead and cuts the top of it off, figuring you don’t eat that part. Pagan comes up behind him and hooks his pointy chin over his shoulder.

“That, dearest boy, is a parsnip,” Pagan says, letting his breath drift hotly along the edge of his ear, followed by his nose running up back of it. Jesus.

“Cut it out,” he mutters, setting the knife down before he divests himself of a finger.

“Cut what out?” Pagan murmurs teasingly, _right in his ear._ He wraps his arms around him but not his hands; those he has awkwardly stuck out in front of them because they’re disgustingly covered with a combined layer of butter and raw chicken juice.

“Oh, _fuck_ no. Go wash your salmonella paws, seriously. You’re such an asshole,” but Pagan’s laughing and he’s laughing and throwing the vegetables onto the pan haphazardly, fuck it, good enough. They get the whole deal shoved into the oven, the timer set, and then Pagan goes on a hunt for the corkscrew so they can break into the wine.

As much as he wants to, Ajay doesn’t think he could kiss him now. That heat building between them is too close to the surface, too ready to erupt. If he kisses him, he won’t be able to help touching his tongue to his, and if he does that he might not be able to stop from just…fuck, maybe just dragging him down to the floor with him. Although where they’d go from there he’s not entirely sure. All he really knows about this topic is use lots of lube and go slow, and that advice doesn’t seem to jive with a quick and dirty kitchen-floor fuck. Although maybe he could try using his mouth…

Stop. Breathe, breathe.

There’s something a little intoxicating about the waiting though, the waiting and the yearning and the slow, licking flames that he and Pagan keep stoking. The way his big hand lingers on the neck of the wine bottle after he tops up Ajay’s glass, lingers with a tiny, suggestive twist as his own socked foot creeps up Pagan’s calf, up his delightfully hard thigh. It’s trembling minutely. He’s pretty sure that he himself is trembling all over. He sucks in deep calming breaths, until that heat recedes a little. Pagan sips his wine nonchalantly, as if Ajay’s toes aren’t mere inches from home. Only that faint shiver betrays him.

Something entirely mean occurs to him, suddenly in the mood to tease him.

“D’you know what I really like?” he says brightly.

Pagan looks at him over his glass, his expression bland and serene. “Oh? And what would that be?”

“The way you were so turned on, so ready to explode just from having your mouth on me.” He grins broadly.

Pagan sputters into his wineglass. Suddenly he’s around the table lightning-fast, one hand digging into Ajay’s shoulder, the other roughly cupping him through his jeans and he can’t help but push up into his hand.

“You’re playing with fire, boy,” Pagan says, eyes hot and intense. “Just you wait. I’ll hold you on the fucking edge for an hour, yes, an _hour_ , and you’ll beg and beg me to bring you off.”

“Big talk,” he manages to gasp out, rapidly hardening under Pagan’s palm. He’s not sure what game they’re even playing but he’s determined to win it, as he stares up into Pagan’s face defiantly. “Is that supposed to be some kinda _threat?”_

Pagan’s mouth quivers. Amusement. He’s trying not to laugh.

“You’re right,” he sighs dramatically. “You’ve called my bluff! It’s not as if I could stand it either.” Eyes crinkled in merriment, he gives Ajay’s dick a fond little pat and walks off to go check on the food.

After prodding at it a few times with a fork, Pagan declares dinner to be ready. Ajay pours them more wine from the cold bottle in the fridge, grateful to stick his flushed face in there for a few moments. The food is fantastic; the chicken juicy and well-flavored with the green…stuff he put in it, herbs of some kind, and Ajay finds that he really likes the weird white carrot thing, the parsnip. It’s all delicious, but they both pick at it, neither of them very hungry for food.

This time, it’s Pagan’s socked foot running up his leg under the table but it’s more affectionate than anything. He helps get the leftovers put away, the dishes stacked in the sink… and something in him breaks. He shoves him up against the cabinets and pins him there and Pagan’s eyes flash with that hot intensity. Pagan meets him halfway, more than halfway, and that kiss is raw electricity, Pagan’s hands tangling in his hair, clutching at the back of his neck as his tongue slides hotly against his own, then breaking away to run a line of wet heat up his ear. His own hands are wadded helplessly in Pagan’s shirt collar. He twists his head just enough to see his face.

Flushed with wine and arousal, he’s gorgeous; brown eyes sparkling, playful little smile, the way his eyelashes do this little demure dip even as the look behind them is heated, so heated. For him. All for him. No more pretending. The desire on Pagan’s face is making his own burn.

“Would you like to go upstairs with me?” Low and warm in that same ear. God.

Ajay tries to get air back into his lungs to answer. “Thought you’d never ask.” Pagan leads him to his bedroom, their sock feet nearly silent on the stairs. He lets go of Ajay’s hand to switch the bedside lamp on, and Ajay’s mouth goes a little dry when he pulls the lube out of his pocket and sets it on the little table.

It’s much cooler up here away from the oven, which he appreciates; he’s burning up and Pagan’s throwing off heat like a furnace but it feels good too, when his hot hands tangle at the hem of his t-shirt and then under, sliding up his ribs, and just that feels so good on his sensitized skin that his eyes are trying to close. He leans against the solidity of Pagan’s chest and kisses that hollow at the base of his throat, traces it with his tongue and tastes the sweat already gathering there. Pagan’s chest hitches against his.

Ajay starts in on his shirt buttons and makes himself do it slow even though he needs to see all of him, needs to feel Pagan’s skin against his. Hell, last night he didn’t even make it out of his jacket, it was so fast. But now they have time, they have all the time in the world, he reminds himself, and he wants to go slow and savor this.

He got to see him shirtless last night even though it was kind of dark, but nothing of the rest of him. The memory of him hot and silky and wet against his palm has him undoing Pagan’s belt as Pagan rucks his t-shirt up and off, and despite his best efforts the rest is a blur of him dragging Pagan’s unbuttoned shirt off and his thumbs hooking trousers and underwear together and shoving it all down, as Pagan does the same to him.

“God,” Ajay murmurs at the sight of him in the warm lamplight, solid and honed like some kind of weapon, old scars here and there. Ajay takes him in from head to feet like he couldn’t last night. He’s already at least half-hard, his eyes glittering in the low light, taking him in too.

“Just _look_ at you,” Pagan breathes, apparently also enjoying the view. Pagan’s heated, delighted gaze sets off that happy fluttering sensation in his belly, has him blushing, all of it mixed with that simmering warmth that’s so, so ready to come to a boil.

“Touch yourself,” he whispers helplessly, not even knowing what prompted it, but all of a sudden he wants to see it, wants to watch him. Pagan smiles a crooked little smile that he can’t interpret. Maybe a little self-deprecating, but he does as he asks and runs one hand down his chest, pausing to tease at one of his nipples before he slides it down the velvety skin of his belly. Ajay really can’t decide if he would rather look at Pagan’s face or his hands. Watches as he braces his legs wider and reaches further down, his long fingers sliding over his hardening length as his other hand gently cups his balls and runs a thumb over them. Ajay swallows with an audible click and looks back up to his face.

Pagan is still gazing at him, but as his touch firms his eyes slide shut like it feels too good to keep them open, like he’s already getting a little lost in the pleasure of it. Ajay watches for a few moments more, taking inventory of what he likes; that little twist at the end of each stroke, the way his thumb is moving. He nestles close against his side and wraps an arm around his waist and the other hand around his, to feel the muscles and tendons flexing under the skin as he pleasures himself. Remembering what Pagan did at first, he leans and mouths at his nipple and at the first touch of his tongue Pagan moans and bucks up into his own fist. Nothing but heated satisfaction in his belly at that reaction, but he slides his face up to his.

“I want you to do it,” he whispers in his ear. “I want you to fuck me.” Pagan’s eyes snap open.

“Oh?” he says, low and breathy and beautiful. “You don’t want it the other way?”

“Don’t mistake me, I sure as shit do,” Ajay reassures him, and then decides he should probably confess. “I just…I’ve um…never done this before. I mean, not with a guy. Don’t want to hurt you.”

Pagan stills their stroking hands. “I wouldn’t have guessed it from last night.”

“Instinct, I guess?” and he laughs a little. “But this is more complicated. See, I know you won’t hurt me, and then I’ll know what to do, what it’s supposed to feel like.” Pagan shivers against him.

“No, dear Ajay…never hurt you. Come here,” and draws him down onto the bed.

 

The coolness of the lube makes him shiver a little, but then all he feels are Pagan’s warm fingers circling, dipping in and teasing at the entrance and then away again and it feels…he doesn’t know _what_ it feels like, it’s indescribable. A little weird at first, just strange and kind of vulnerable to have somebody’s fingers there with his legs spread like this, and he has to tell himself to relax for it. But the longer Pagan strokes him there the better it feels, like it’s building on itself in layers of vibrating pleasure. Pagan is watching his face, nuzzling at him from time to time, which Ajay takes to mean is everything okay without him having to continuously say it.

“It’s good, it feels…I dunno what the hell it feels like, but it’s _good,_ ” and Pagan chuckles a little. Soon, it feels like not enough, what he’s doing, he wants _more_ of it, wants more of that slick, teasing heat. As soon as he pushes back against Pagan’s fingers, he leans in and grazes his teeth across his nipple and that has him writhing. He’s never been particularly sensitive there, but it hits like a hot electric current that connects both nipples and his cock with what Pagan’s fingers are doing in a tingling rush.

Pagan looks him right in the eye and slowly slides a finger inside of him.

“Oh god,” Ajay groans out, clutching at his shoulders. It feels good and still like almost too much at the same time but Pagan stays so still and waits, his big warm hand flush across his ass cheeks, cradling him there and he moans. Pagan shivers against him.

“All right?” he says, and Ajay nods. “Dearest, you have…you have no idea how this feels, how _hot_ you are inside, hot and tight and wonderful,” he murmurs, and fuck, when he says that in his rough silky voice he actually quivers around him, just from that. Pagan nuzzles at him again, kisses his ear. “I know that this feels good, but I want to show you the reason that men enjoy this,” and he shifts that finger just a little and rubs against…something that jolts like heated ecstasy and then suffuses warm through his whole lower body.

It feels so good he lays there stunned with it. He imagines Pagan inside him, velvety hot and heavy and slickly rubbing that spot on every stroke. “Oh fuck, fuck do that again,” and has to force himself to let go of Pagan’s shoulder where he probably gripped too hard.

Pagan slides his finger out almost all the way, which he unconsciously chases with a little disappointed sound that he didn’t mean to make. He slides it out…and adds another and pushes back in slow and hits that spot again and his eyes try to roll back in his head.

That’s it, he wants him, wants Pagan sliding inside him _right now,_ doesn’t even care if it hurts a little, Pagan will stay still and let him take as long as he needs to adjust. He gets a hand wrapped around his bicep and tugs, hooks a leg around one of his hips and tries to pull him into position. “Now, right fucking _now,_ please…”

Pagan shakes against him, trembling all over; maybe with the effort of not just surging up and burying himself inside him. “It might be easier,” Pagan murmurs, “to have you on top. That way you can control everything.”

There are definite merits to that plan, but…Ajay frowns. That’s not what he wants.

“No, I want you to do it. I want to _feel_ you do it, feel you pushing yourself into me, sliding inside…” It’s hard to explain and it’s getting hard to think at all, but he has a picture of being underneath him, legs clamped around him, arms around his shoulders, his neck, hanging on as hard as he can. Letting Pagan take that control…and then feeling him lose it as he gets close, as his thrusts go short and stuttered. Ajay wonders if he’ll be able to feel it inside when he comes, and shudders all over.

Pagan sits up on his knees with the lube and Ajay watches him squeeze some out…but some impulse has him surging up and slinging an arm around his neck and kissing him. “Let me do it…let me help,” he whispers against his mouth.

“Be careful,” he warns, and now even his voice is shaking, he’s so keyed up. It’s pretty flattering, really. “Too much touching, and I’m liable to embarrass myself and ruin the fun.” Forehead pressed to his, Ajay entwines their fingers and spreads the slick stuff over him together, drinking in the tiny keening sound of need that Pagan makes.

All that’s left is for Ajay to lie back and pull Pagan with him, a flushed and heavy-lidded look on his face as Ajay wriggles into position against him. Probably neither of them are going to last long; too worked up, too excited, been too many years. That’s all right. There’s time; they have time.

“Now, please Pagan.” Begging for it, knowing he’s begging, not giving a shit.

And Pagan obliges him.

It’s so much blunter than his fingers are, which he expected, but what he didn’t expect was how much warmer it would be. Pagan presses himself against his opening, just the tiniest bit of pressure and he makes himself go almost limp. That slippery heat slides against him and then breaches him, the hot head pushing inside and he concentrates on relaxing and taking him in. The world narrows to the point where they’re connected.

Pagan watches his face for signs of discomfort even as his eyes keep trying to close with how good it feels. It still burns a little with that too-much feeling, even with him being so gentle, but it’s not bad. It feels better than it hurts, sparks of pleasure shooting right through that slight burning. Pagan is hot and slick and heavy as he slides inside him, just as he knew he would be…god, _inside_ him.

Slow, hot slide, so slow …and then Pagan’s hips are flush against him, is buried to the hilt in him. Pagan rests his forehead against his, noses touching. His eyes are closed tightly, almost like he’s in pain, with little pants of breath. “All right? Christ, I…not going to last long,” he manages to force out.

“S’okay, doesn’t matter how long you last. Just…just hang on,” as he shifts, clamps his thighs around Pagan’s sides and gets him in a little deeper as Pagan hisses, trembling all over. That burn is almost gone, replaced by something indescribably good. Just like before, with his fingers, what was almost too much is rapidly becoming not quite enough; he wants more of it.

Pagan is propped up on his arms over him but Ajay reaches up and wraps his arms around his shoulders and pulls him down against him. Pagan slides his arms around his back and holds him close and warm, mouth seeking his again, slow and easy and languid. “There,” Ajay murmurs, when they break apart just enough for air. “This is as close as we can get.” He grins dazedly. “Until it’s your turn, that is. Me inside you.”

Pagan shivers a little. “Oh, yes. God, yes.”

Ajay squeezes him with his thighs. “Move when you want,” he whispers against Pagan’s cheek, and Pagan does; almost all the way out, and then back in slow, still going easy with impressive self-control. Now that Ajay knows that it’s there, he shifts until…oh. One of those slow thrusts rubs hotly against that place inside of him and he trembles all over. “Right…right there.”

“Oh, is that it? Is that what you want?” Pagan says teasingly even as his voice quavers, even as he slides into him with a little more force but it’s perfect, he doesn’t have to hold back, not now…

“Harder,” he says, and his voice is a shaky as Pagan’s is. “Don’t…god, like that, just like that…don’t hold back,” as he squeezes Pagan’s sides with his thighs, urging him on even as he speeds up and his thrusts are already getting a little shorter, a little erratic.

The satiny skin of Pagan’s belly is rubbing hot against his length with every motion, not quite enough to put him over the edge but he doesn’t really care. Pagan’s about to come apart in his arms, so close now, panting breath against his throat like a bellows, his heart hammering against his. Ajay moves a hand to his lower back and pulls him even closer, to get more friction on…that’s it, that’s enough, sensation building so fast like hot lightning in his vertebrae, liquid gold in his belly as he clings to Pagan as hard as he can as that wave is about to crash down on the two of them.

Pagan ruts into him with some force behind it, plunging into him but it’s perfect, it’s fucking fantastic now that he’s all loosened up for it. Both of them sweating against each other with the effort of building that tension higher and higher, tighter and tighter, straining together for that peak.

He moans in his ear with the intensity of it as Pagan buries himself as deep as he can and his whole body goes rigid in his arms, against his thighs as he pants and spills deep inside of him and oh god, he can feel it when it happens, he can feel those pulses and the heat of it and he works himself on him, drawing it out as Pagan himself moans hot and dirty in his ear, probably not even aware of it. He works himself on Pagan’s still hard length, thrusts up against his belly and that’s enough to send him off that cliff after him, with him, Pagan still coming. The two of them shattering together in ecstasy as his own cock throbs hotly between their bellies.

He can feel himself clenching around Pagan in rhythmic spasms, milking him for everything he can give as he buries his sweating face into his shoulder and just hangs on. The pleasure is so good and strong that it’s like a drug, like almost too much. Hot, trembling light through his entire body, exploding in his head behind his eyelids and then floating in the warm dark.

After a time, he wakes at some point to Pagan untangling them enough to get to the bathroom, staggering and maybe three-fourths asleep still. Ajay lies there and listens to him splashing water, and he comes out makeup-less and smelling of soap and toothpaste, still unsteady.

Ajay’s legs aren’t exactly wanting to hold him up either; stiff and just a little sore in one fairly intimate spot, but not nearly as bad as he feared it would be. He washes up perfunctorily and brushes his teeth with his finger, too drained to head downstairs and grab his bag. He comes back to Pagan curled up on half of the blankets already asleep again, and Ajay prods at him so he’ll budge over some. Pagan has his arms tucked around himself like he’s cold, but with some more gentle prodding he shifts just enough for Ajay to get the bedspread out from under him and vaguely thrown over top of him instead.

Ajay switches the lamp off and climbs in, burrowing against his side. He tugs one of his arms free to use as a pillow, too tired to locate a real one. Pagan responds by snuggling closer in his sleep and wrapping both arms around him, and that…

…is perfect.

He’s asleep again in seconds.

 

***

 

Hours later, in the darkest part of the night, Pagan wakes a little to warm darkness and big warm hands on him, stroking up and down his sides. It’s safe, he’s safe…to be woken like this would ordinarily have him diving for the gun he keeps under the bed, old instincts triggered, but…somehow his lower mind knows that it’s all right, that it’s just warm and good with no harmful intent. Safe.

He stretches unselfconsciously against those hands to get more of that feeling. Lips against the back of his neck with little sucking kisses that make him shiver. It occurs to him that he might still be dreaming, as the hands start rubbing his back in long sleepy strokes, kneading the muscles until he’s nearly limp and sinking into the mattress. One of those hands drifts lower, brushing over his ass and that feels even better, that warmth against sensitized skin. Fingers brush teasingly down the cleft and he pushes up a little, spreading his legs to get more of it…

Ajay’s warm breath gusts across his ear. “God, you’re…I don’t even know. So responsive. You all right with this, though?” and it comes out a drowsy rumble. Sexy, drowsy rumble.

He smiles into the pillow. Not a dream at all. Ajay here with him, touching him.

“Oh, is it finally my turn?” he murmurs, as Ajay chuckles and reaches for the lube.

Ajay goes even slower than he did, maddeningly slow, and he can’t tell if it’s because he’s nervous of if he’s merely trying to drive him crazy. It’s been many, many years, but he remembers how to loosen up for this, he feels…unusually safe with him, and he’s already so drowsy and relaxed anyway that Ajay could have just rolled him over and pushed into him about five times already...

Pagan finally just turns over himself, reaches down and grasps his wrist and pulls, and Ajay’s eyes widen as his teasing fingers sink into him without resistance.

The former, then. Nerves. That’s quite all right, just trying to be careful and not cause him any pain. Such a sweet, good man. There’s no room for hurt in this warm place they’ve made together, just the two of them. He sighs in contentment even as he _wants._

“I need you,” he whispers, feeling oddly confessional. “Need you inside me. Can’t you feel how ready I am for you?” And Ajay quivers so sweetly against him at that. “Please, my dearest, please…” as he mouths at the tender skin of Ajay’s throat, his lips against his thudding pulse.

As Ajay pushes into him with no pain whatsoever, just a blunt, devastatingly hot slide of pleasure that has him gasping and writhing into it, he finds he can’t quite decide which way is better.

After Ajay’s in as deep as he can go he stops, to give him time to adjust but he doesn’t need it, doesn’t want it, wants him moving and building that pleasure in waves, greedy for it. He hooks a leg around him and rocks against him as much as he can from this angle until Ajay gets the idea and moves with him and it’s so good that his eyes keep closing.

Ajay keeps shifting against him, inside him, changing angles…he’s such a fast learner. Now that he knows what it feels like for himself, he’s…Pagan gasps as that white-hot pleasure jolts through him, as Ajay finds what he was looking for.

“There we go,” Ajay murmurs, as his arms go around him to hold him at that perfect angle as he fucks into him just a little faster. Damn, a very quick learner, as he slides his hand in between their bellies to stroke himself in time with Ajay’s thrusts as he wraps his other arm around his shoulders. This time is slower and sleepier, Ajay lasting longer than he did.

Ajay rocks into him and kisses him and holds him warmly, neither of them quite awake but somewhere in between, somewhere between waking and dreams. The pleasure builds so slowly that perhaps he does drift off a little at one point, Ajay warm and comforting and close and he dearly hopes that he isn’t offended because this is beautiful, he’s never had sex like this, never been held and made love to quite like this before.

“As close as we can be. That’s what you wanted, wasn’t it? Turns out I want that, too,” he whispers in Ajay’s ear, and he shivers all over. His rocking, easy thrusts are still slow, almost languid, but Pagan can feel the pleasured tension in the long line of his back, the muscles almost vibrating. “That’s right, darling…come for me, you’re so close, aren’t you? Come inside me, I want to feel you,” Pagan murmurs, and Ajay sucks in air and rocks into him a little harder and obeys him. What surprises him though is his own orgasm, like it was lying in wait to warmly, sweetly ambush him. “ _Oh,_ ” he says, as he arches and comes as well, eyes wide. “Oh…” as he stripes their bellies in time with Ajay’s gentle pulses deep inside him.

Less than a minute later he’s already gone, asleep and dreaming even as Ajay is still inside of him.

 

***


	7. Old History

***

 

Pagan wakes with a start to the sun shining through the curtains. _Overslept_ is his first jolted thought, followed by _Saturday._ He relaxes, only then registering both his nakedness and the unaccustomed warmth pressed against his back, cuddled right up against him. Ajay. He turns over carefully and Ajay lays a hand on his chest with a tiny contented sound, still asleep.

Well.

Certainly not what he was expecting. The most he’d hoped for was dinner and a quick fuck afterwards, hopefully in bed but he wasn’t going to argue if it were the couch, and then Ajay taking off for home. This…tenderness, Ajay making love to him, with him, sleeping beside him…he didn’t even know that’s what he wanted.

Perhaps he’ll stop underestimating him sometime, as he reaches to smooth his thumb across the wings of his eyebrows, the smattering of freckles across his nose. Such a handsome face, such a beautiful man so sweetly asleep against him like this. An undeserved gift.

“That feels wonderful,” Ajay murmurs, surprising him. He had been sure that he was asleep. “I know that we have stuff we need to talk about, and that it’s probably going to suck…but maybe we can stay like this for just a little while longer?” Ajay opens his eyes, and the look in them has Pagan gathering him up, holding him close.

“As long as you want, dear boy. Anything,” he finds himself promising. Dangerous, so dangerous, to make promises he can’t keep. “Anything you want.” Heedless of morning breath and sweat and lingering sticky residue, Pagan kisses him and twines himself around Ajay until he sighs, a little gust of air against his chest.

They stay like that for a long time, not asleep; he can all but hear Ajay’s mind working, turning things over.

“Pagan,” Ajay whispers, “right before she…she died, she had one really lucid day. And she talked about what it was like growing up in Kyrat, and she said, ‘I wish I could go to Lakshmana. Please, take me to Lakshmana, my son.’ And of course, I told her I would.” The hairs raise on the back of Pagan’s neck, just hearing him say that word. “And I know that talking about her probably hurts you…but you’re the only person that I can ask, what that means. A place? A person? I thought it might be a place but couldn’t find it on any map of Kyrat. You’re the only one I have that knew her, so please, tell me what she meant, what I need to do.” Ajay runs his hand along his ribs gently. “It…it weighs on me, that I haven’t done what she wanted me to. But, maybe it might be a little easier to talk about it like this? Or we can get up and get dressed, if not.”

“No, I think you’re right. This is…it’s very nice. Comfortable. Might keep you from getting quite so angry with me.” It wouldn’t shock him if Ajay gets up and bolts for the door, after what he has to tell him.

“Pagan…no. No. I won’t be mad at you. Mom kept her secrets my entire life, and I’m just now realizing there may have been…maybe not good reasons, but shit that she just couldn’t talk about.”

“Well, I do wish she could have told you anyway, if only to save me from having to do it now. Perhaps that’s…very selfish of me, but these things have gone unsaid for far too long. Doesn’t make it any easier though.” Pagan sighs. “I suppose I should start somewhere near the beginning.”

And he does.

He spills the whole sordid tale, determined to leave nothing out, not wanting Ajay to feel like he’s keeping secrets from him ever again. Bare all the way to the depths of his grimy soul. Everything from his youth in Hong Kong to them having to escape to America to avoid his father’s Triad rivals, hellbent on killing them all. How he killed another boy who had jumped him with a knife when he was sixteen, blade against blade, and how his own mother had cried for that other boy’s mother, even as she rejoiced that he was the one to come home. Ajay’s eyes had grown wide at that, perhaps at the fact that he’s naked in bed with a murderer. “He nearly skewered my liver, all the same,” and shows Ajay the old, old white line across his ribs. “We were just kids, but we were still killing each other over who our fathers were. Pitiful, sordid shit. The whole business was pitiful.”

He tells Ajay how he escaped that life by enrolling in the university, him and his sister Yuma both, and how he met Ajay’s parents, newly emigrated themselves. How they were fleeing the civil war in Kyrat: “It had gotten to be quite bad at that point; the country was in shambles, not a hospital to be found, people starving to death…and Ishwari pregnant with you. One of the only sensible things that your father Mohan did was to get you both out of there.” How the university offered free lectures, a big draw for people looking to improve their English skills. “I don’t know how she talked him into it, but the Ghales were there for every single one of them. She was so pregnant with you, glowing with it, beautiful…and then one day, they didn’t show. They were gone for a few weeks, a month, perhaps…and then they were back, with a tiny you cradled in her arms.” He smiles against Ajay’s hair at that memory.

He tells Ajay how the four of them became friends, and how good America was to his mother; Kyrat was an oppressive place for women, and that she had been a child bride locked into an arranged marriage. While Ishwari blossomed, Mohan became more distressed; angrier, and more abusive the more independent she became. How he himself had sneered at what he saw as Mohan’s fragile and toxic masculinity. How he realized that he was falling in love with her, and that she returned those feelings. Here, she could work and live independently of her husband if she wished, and her neighbors weren’t going to attempt to stone her for sleeping with another man.

He tells Ajay about how they had virtually everyone in their lives angry with them: his own father for not heeding his arrangement for marrying into some upper-crust Chinese family, his sister for giving up on his original goal of entering politics. “But we were absolutely besotted with each other, so in love that it was ridiculous. I took an adjunct position here and worked my ass off, teaching as many classes as they’d allow me, and we rented a tiny shabby apartment, just the three of us.” He grips him tightly, willing him to understand. “Ajay, I had a _family_. And soon…we discovered there were going to be four of us. I had a little boy already, light of my life…and I was going to have a little daughter as well. Lakshmana.”

He feels more than hears Ajay’s sharp intake of breath. It hurts even now, that same spike in his chest every time he says that name aloud. Time hasn’t seemed to have worn the sharp point of it off much. He had thought this part would be harder, but the words are tumbling out of him now, faster and faster, perhaps just to get them out, like ripping off a bandaid. These are things he’s never told another human being. These are things that Ajay has to know, and only he can tell them.

“We were both so shocked…it had to have been the first time we were together, perhaps the second. We weren’t particularly careful, as it had taken her so long to become pregnant with you, and oh, she was afraid to tell me at first; she thought I would be angry with her. We had only been together for a few months, after all…but I was overjoyed. Those were good years, Ajay, they were. Hard, in some ways, and we didn’t have much…but they were good ones. I kept teaching but I was able to stay home with you two in the evenings while your mother worked; she enjoyed doing so, loved the independence of it, of just being able to talk to whoever she wanted whenever she wanted. But what we didn’t count on was your cunt of a father.”

Pagan shivers like he has a fever, hot and cold at once. But he’s come this far.

“I was away at a conference when it happened. I will never forgive myself for leaving her alone, but you have to understand; he’d stopped stalking your mother the year after Lakshmana was born. We’d gotten complacent, and so it was easy for him to sneak in an open window and…and kill the baby.” He doesn’t recognize his own voice, this pleading tone. Pleading for what? Fucking forgiveness?

“He…murdered her, and tried to take you, and Ishwari shot and killed him. Put him down like a rabid dog with the .38 that I had bought. Then she called and left a message at my hotel: Come home, something terrible has happened. She wrote me a letter that said that she loved me and that we would be…together again soon. She packed a small bag and took a taxi to the airport and was back in Kyrat with you, just as I was arriving home to the police and the media circus and a dead child and…I broke. I went mad. I did.” In contrast to just a moment ago, he’s starting to have trouble forcing the words out. “I couldn’t take it, Ajay, I couldn’t…that _destroyed_ me. I had occasionally done coke at parties and such in Hong Kong, but after that happened I got high and stayed that way for a week, two, I don’t know. I wrecked my car on the freeway. I was wandering in the woods in some kind of psychosis and the EMTs had to tranq me like an animal because I attacked anyone who came near me. Yuma talked them into letting me go after a seventy-two hour hold. This is all second-hand; I remember none of it…”

This was too much, way too much to say, way too much of his fucked-up life to load onto Ajay. He instantly regrets it; it was insane to tell him this shit, need to know or not. Even after what they shared last night, as wonderful as it was…it doesn’t _change_ anything, it doesn’t…make him someone he can trust, he knows better than that.

He feels more naked now, stripped bare, than he did when Ajay was actually inside him.

But if he can’t trust Ajay, then who can he, in all the world? He’s the only one he has left. Pagan closes his eyes.

His minor attack of anxiety is interrupted by big hands rubbing warmly across his shoulders, down his back.

“Not your fault,” Ajay says huskily, “not your fucking fault. I think you know that, deep down, but I’ll keep telling you until you believe it. Believe me, if you can’t believe yourself. Not your fucking fault. And that other shit? You did what you had to do to _survive,_ ” as his thumb brushes so softly over that scar on his side. No judgement, no anger, in Ajay’s eyes. Just…compassion, as Ajay holds him closer. “God, my _father_ did that…how can you even stand to look at me, Pagan?”

Pagan surreptitiously wipes his eyes. Ajay probably isn’t fooled, but he does have a little dignity. “Because you were my little boy,” and it comes out more plaintive, more emotional than he means it to, but he soldiers on anyway. Too late, far too late to hold anything back. “You weren’t my son, and even being that small you never called me Papa, but you were my little boy all the same. When you first toddled, it was my fingers you held onto. When you fell and skinned your little hand, it was me there with the bandaids and kisses. I know you don’t remember any of that at all. For the best, considering current circumstances, don’t you agree?”

Ajay chuckles against his shoulder, and that sound unlocks something in his chest so he can get a deep breath. “It seems strange to me, but I don’t recognize that little boy in you. Also for the best, I think. I didn’t recognize you at all, until I read that name aloud and looked down and there you were, Ishwari’s eyes looking back at me in your handsome face. But appearances aside, you’re not really like either of them, you know. Just yourself. Just Ajay,” as the man in question pulls him down into an unexpected kiss that goes on and on, creating a frisson of heat in his belly, down low. Just a little hot coal to be held for later; there’s still more to say, and do. But this conversation has gone better than his wildest dreams.

“I still don’t understand though,” Ajay says, his brows furrowed a little. “So what did she mean, take her to Lakshmana? Did she mean, bury her with her?”

“In a way. You’ll understand, when I show you. But we’ll need clothes for this part.”

“All right. God, we’re a mess though…do you mind if I take a shower first?”

“Of course not, my boy. Clean towels and washcloths and things are in the cupboard.”

“Do…would you like to join me?”

Pagan thinks it over. What that means, if it means anything at all. “I think I should like that,” he murmurs.

The shower was more or less about actually getting clean, although Ajay’s hands are almost reverent as they spread lather across his shoulders and down his back. He supposes he does a little reverent touching of his own; Ajay almost seems to glow under the bathroom light, all plush muscle and sleek beauty, and Pagan finds himself leaning against his broad chest under the hot water and running his fingers along the downy skin at the small of his back. Ajay shifts and his hardness brushes Pagan’s thigh.

“I had forgotten what twenty-seven is like,” he says with a chuckle, reaching down. He says that but it doesn’t take long for him to be in the same condition, what with Ajay sighing with pleasure against his shoulder, warm and heavy in his hand. Like being young again himself, as Ajay reaches for him with a gentle caress. Like second chances, as they shudder together.

That’s dangerous as well, to think that way. He knows it is.

 

Afterwards, he just throws on workout clothes and runs a hand through his wet hair, doesn’t even bother to shave. The two of them dry and dressed, Pagan leads him out to the back garden, down the little stone path that needs swept of autumn leaves.

When he turns back to Ajay, he can see the confusion in his eyes. It does look fairly nondescript from the outside, an ordinary garden shed. He opens the heavy wooden door and switches on the battery-powered light he’d installed by the frame.

He doesn’t come here much, the pain of it too great…but he keeps it immaculately clean. He moves around the small space and lights the lamps, the incense that’s laid ready, the place a Kyrati temple in miniature. Ajay steps in and hovers by his shoulder, looking up at the portrait of Lakshmana above her urn.

“I can see your face, in hers,” he mumbles, and Pagan can hear the thickness of tears in his voice. “Yours and Mom’s together.” Pagan brushes nonexistent dust off the tray that her urn sits on, keeping his back turned in case Ajay wants privacy.

But he doesn’t. He leans his head against the back of Pagan’s shoulder. Pagan touches his hand down on the empty part of the tray, Lakshmana’s urn set off-center, like this place was always waiting for her. To the right is Ishwari’s letter, framed and hanging in between the tapestries.

“She felt like she had to go,” Pagan whispers. “That part, I understand. She’d killed a man, her own husband, and she must have been so afraid…there was an investigation of course, but they ruled self-defense, even in her absence.” His fingers run along the frame. “But then she came back…”

He doesn’t say it. _Why didn’t she come back to me, like she promised?_ But then, he doesn’t have to.

“We didn’t stay in Kyrat long, maybe a year,” Ajay murmurs. “I barely remember it. I guess whatever she was looking for, she didn’t find it there, either.” He reaches out and entwines their fingers. “She…she was so complicated. I don’t think I’ll ever understand why she made the decisions she made. But I think she wanted me to find you. It’s those two things she said: I want you to enroll at the university. I want you to take me to Lakshmana.” He squeezes Pagan’s hand. “Next time I’m here, I’ll bring her urn. And we’ll put her right here, where she wanted to be.”

Perhaps she’s keeping her promise after all, and he feels his own eyes trying to fill. He leans his head back and squeezes Ajay’s hand and sighs.

 

After they come back inside, he makes them omelettes for breakfast, giant ones stuffed with last night’s leftover chicken and vegetables and truly unhealthy amounts of cheese. Comfort food. He gives Ajay the prettier one, in the mood to show off a little, and Ajay shows his appreciation by kissing the cook. They wash the dishes together.

But later, while Ajay is getting his things together to go home, he finds himself feeling…more and more awkward, perhaps. Not knowing what to do with his hands.

“Ajay, I know that…regardless of whatever else happened between us, that you needed to come here, and you needed me to tell you about our family, about what happened.” He swallows. It keeps bothering him, more than a niggling in the back of his mind. “But…why me? An entire university full of attractive young people, and yet you choose me. Why?” He winces internally, because there’s still some of that plaintive tone that he really didn’t mean to let slip.

And perhaps it’s even the wrong time to ask it, because he doesn’t get an answer, not really.

“Maybe I just have a thing for professors,” Ajay says, and pulls him close, laughing against his throat. It breaks the tension, anyway, as Pagan chuckles with him. Laughs, and tries not to think about how Ajay is a knife aimed at his battered and lonely heart. A blade that he wants nothing more than to hold close and cuddle up to. About how this thing between them is probably going to make him bleed before it’s all said and done.

 

He snorts at himself, at the melodrama of it all.

 

That night, he tosses and turns, not able to get comfortable. The pillows won’t cooperate, the blankets feel too hot, too heavy, but when he kicks them off the air is too chill. Nothing right.

After Ajay had left, he’d stripped the bed; the sheets were an absolute disaster, but now he regrets it and wishes…no, it’s ridiculous to want to sleep on crusty filth just because he _misses_ him, because the smooth, clean cloth doesn’t smell like his skin, his hair, because he’s erased the evidence he was ever here at all. Gone without a trace…

He punches the pillow in frustration. He curls into a ball and eventually falls asleep that way, arms wrapped tightly around himself.

Sunday night is not much better, and he briefly considers vodka; four or five shots should put him good and out…until he remembers that the next day is Monday, and teaching at eight-thirty am with a hangover is absolute misery, and that he needs all his wits about him because it’s Ajay’s terrible class that occasionally calls for physical restraint of the students. He rolls his eyes and eventually passes out in front of the television.

 

***


	8. Light

***

 

Monday morning finds him snarling at his own face in the mirror, too tired to even figure out what has him so out of sorts as he puts on his makeup. Warpaint. A soldier in the educational trenches, as he picks out a waistcoat in autumn colors along with the brown jacket. Camouflage.

Just before he sets foot into 146B, he takes a moment to square his shoulders, takes a deep breath. Jerks the door open and breezes in…and nearly stops dead, because seeing Ajay again after everything hits him with some visceral feeling he can’t even identify. Ajay himself sits up a little straighter and he’s wearing that sweater and his eyes just…light up to see him.

It’s been so, so long since anyone’s looked at him that way.

He can’t gaze back, as much as he would love to.  Would like nothing better than to stand there and look into his eyes the entire class period, if he's being perfectly honest.  But from where he’s standing at the podium, at least he’s always in his peripheral vision…and Ajay smiles warmly just for him when no one else is looking.

 

Later that day, just as he’s contemplating lunch, his phone buzzes in his pocket.  Yuma. It’s never, ever anything good when it’s Yuma.

 

 _11:20 am – Come meet me for lunch,_  
_my office_

 

Fan-bloody-tastic. Not, are you free? Not, would you like to? Into the lion’s den. What the fuck is it now? Pagan rubs at his eye.

 

 _11:21 am – you get me for exactly fifteen minutes._  
_You know I’m busy every Mon._

_11:22 am – fifteen is fine. Plenty of time_

 

It takes Pagan five minutes to walk across campus to Yuma’s building, and he’s tempted to deduct those five minutes from her allotted time. When he arrives, Yuma has her feet up on her desk and an unbecoming smirk on her face. The extra chair is situated in such a way so it’s either stand there and ask her to move her fucking feet, or do what he chooses to do instead and irritably slap her boots off the desk and out of his way. It’s all games, always little power games with her. Before she can even open her mouth, he pulls out his phone and sets the timer and tosses it onto her desk with a thump. “There, dearest sister. There’s your fifteen bloody minutes.”

As he’s sitting down his stomach grumbles, distracting him. He had no illusions that this little meeting had anything to do with actual lunch; he thinks longingly of the ham sandwich which is waiting on him back in his own office. Ham with all the trimmings. He made it himself this morning, a towering thing of delights that would make that Dagwood fellow proud…

“You’ll never guess what I saw not even an hour ago,” Yuma purrs, like the cat that got the goddamned cream. “The sweater that I bought for you a few Christmases ago, that nice green cashmere one…the _expensive_ one. Remember that sweater? The one that _Ajay Ghale_ is parading around in today?”

He freezes in the middle of seating himself, tries to hide the hitch by unbuttoning his jacket and carelessly dropping into the chair but she’s noted that reaction; he knows she’s seen it because her eyes brighten with hell’s own light. The smile is fixed now, plastered and feral while her eyes call for blood.

Damn. _Damn._ How in the hell did he forget that?

He forces his body into nonchalant lines, drops his eyes to examine his nails, picks at a tiny snag.

“The boy came to my office hours with a question…no matter what else he is, he’s still my student, Yuma dear,” he says, bored and sarcastic. “He’d forgotten his coat somewhere and was cold, that sweater was lying around my office, I loaned it to him. Nothing to get all bent out of shape about. I’m sure he’ll return it at some point.” He crosses his legs and drums his fingers carelessly on his belly. “Is that all, or…” with a pointed glance at the running timer on his phone.

That feral grin just grows wider, more and more teeth in evidence. “Tell me, brother of mine,” she says softly, so softly, and the short hair on the back of his head prickles, “to lie to me is one thing, but do you really believe the bullshit you tell yourself? Do you lie awake at night and tell yourself that he _cares_ about you?”

He leans back and laughs. “I’ve _told_ you time and again that the peyote or whatever that shit is that you favor is bad news. Listen to yourself! So fucking paranoid over a boy that has had no relevance in my life for twenty-five _years._ ” He chuckles again, lets a little mockery slide into it. “Seriously, lay off the psychedelics. Speed life up or slow it down, I won’t judge you for it, lord knows…but don’t fuck with reality.” He pushes himself to his feet and rebuttons his jacket. “And that’s my brotherly advice for today.”

He’s reaching for his phone when she slams both hands down on the desk, her face suddenly in his.

“Listen, _listen_ to yourself,” she snarls in his face in fury, and despite his attempts at self-control he can feel his own pulse pick up in outrage, loud in his ears. “How weak, how fucking _pathetic._ I didn’t think so at the time, but Father was so wise not to rely on you, you would have broken at the worst possible time and ruined everything…if you had had it in you to stand strong at his side, we could have saved our family’s honor, the Min name…”

“Oh yes!” he laughs again, a jovial chuckle, but this time it sounds fairly forced even to himself. God, she can get under his skin like no one else. “Remind me again; which part of that oh-so-honorable family business would you have salvaged? The black market smuggling? The drugs? The brothels?” He spreads his hands wide. “Fucking Kowloon street-trash with delusions of grandeur, is all the Mins _ever_ were. And I wasn’t about to be the good little soldier, the yes-man that Gang wanted. _You_ were what he wanted,” he jabs a finger in her face, “a weapon in his hand…but he was too much of a goddamned misogynist to see it. So I’m sorry all your vitriol at me boils down to the fact you weren’t born a boy.”

“Even now, you can’t keep a civil tongue in your head when you talk about him! Your own _father,_ and you can’t even call him that.” She looks him up and down with a sneer. “Or won’t, like the ungrateful prick that you are.”

This conversation is suddenly so depressing, so heavy with old anger. Old sadness, old resentments. He sighs, rubs the back of his head. “Neither of us could be what he wanted, Yuma. Neither of us could live up to his expectations. It’s been so many years, my dear, don’t you think you should….”

She cuts him off. “So long that you apparently can’t remember what happened the last time that a Ghale humiliated you, that fucking _whore_ that couldn’t even…”

He decides right then and there that he’s had enough, has heard all of this bullshit he’s going to.

“You’ll want to have a care, dear Yuma, for what comes out of your mouth next,” soft, soft and dangerous. “She hasn’t even been dead three months. I’ve been patient…Christ, have I _ever_ been fucking patient. But you’re skirting the very edge of it.”

He watches as her face twists with some emotion he can’t identify. “Very well. But Pagan, _stay away from him_. You’re an empty-headed, flighty idiot, but you’re still my brother. And I think you already know deep down that he’ll do nothing but hurt you, that he’ll get close to you and make you _care,_ ” she spits this as if the very notion is distasteful, “make you care and then gut you and throw you away. I know that you…loved her. But she threw you away like you were worth nothing.”

Sudden heat suffusing his face that he can’t hide; the anger and shame finally breaking free of his iron grip because hasn’t he been lying awake at night thinking much the same thing? Fretting over it but already in too deep, too caught up to back away. Wanting too much, caring too much, cursing himself for a besotted fool that really, _really_ ought to know better.

But that’s at night.

In the bright day, it’s Ajay wearing his sweater and sneaking little smiles his way with so much light in his eyes…

“I think we’re done here, don’t you?” And he has phone in hand and beats a hasty retreat before she can say another word. Perhaps add ‘cowardly’ to the list of insults she likes to fling at him, but so be it. He turns the timer off as he’s walking down the hall with two minutes to spare.

He sets an intentionally fast pace back to his office to work the residual anger out, and when that isn’t enough he makes two more circuits around Hewlett for good measure, fast enough to burn a little, not so fast as to earn him stares from passerby.

Once he’s back in his office, he realizes that his appetite for his glorious sandwich is all but gone. _Damn_ her. He should have told her where to shove her little ‘lunch’ meeting…but no, the fact that she’s been observing Ajay more closely than he thought is something he needed to know. Not that she can do much to either of them with pure unsubstantiated rumor, but he needs to warn Ajay of it…come clean about it. He also needs help eating this monstrous sandwich.

A small and guarded part of him also acknowledges that he desperately wants to see him, touch him, observe that light again in his warm dark eyes and convince himself that he’s not making it up in some grotesque false hope.

A not so small, mischievous part of him also wants to do the exact opposite of what Yuma keeps bitching about, _fuck_ her and her pseudo-concern and her dragging up all that old shit over and over again…

 

 _12:14 pm – Come and help me_  
_eat this gargantuan sandwich I made_

_12:15 pm – fuck yeah starving brt_

 

True to his word, it’s not six minutes later that Ajay is walking through his office door. He had scrounged napkins and a plastic knife from the staff room to cut the thing with and laid it all out neatly on his desk, like a picnic.

“Go ahead and lock it Ajay, no one’s scheduled to…”

Ajay locks the door, drops his bag, and is in his arms in one fluid motion. The wool is so soft against his hands, soft and warm from his body. It really does suit him, that shade of green is perfect, he thinks inanely, as Ajay pulls back enough to look at him with his dark eyes sparkling.

“Hey there,” Ajay whispers.

“Hello, dear Ajay,” he whispers back.

Before he quite realizes his intentions, his mouth is on Ajay’s, eyes fluttering closed of their own volition. He’s seen what he needed to see.

They only break apart when Ajay’s stomach rumbles loudly.

“Sorry,” he says, a little sheepishly, and then he spots the sandwich. “Wow, you weren’t kidding,” low and reverent. He’s still holding onto Pagan’s biceps like he really doesn’t want to let go, not even for the food that he’s now eyeing hungrily. Pagan throws his head back and laughs. Perhaps he has some appetite after all, his stomach suddenly full of sunshine.

“Oh, you did say you were starving! Don’t be sorry…come, come and sit down!” He gives Ajay a last little fond squeeze and pushes him towards the other chair.

“Man, just look at this thing. Beats what I was going to have, that’s for sure. But it works out, see? Goes nicely with your sandwich.” He rummages around in his bag and sets a packet of crisps and a still-cold bottle of Coke on Pagan’s desk and insists that they split both. Pagan cuts the monster into quarters and makes sure that Ajay gets three of them, sliding the extra quarter over onto his napkin when he’s not paying attention.

They eat in companionable, satisfied silence, passing the bottle of Coke back and forth. When Ajay tosses the last crisp in his mouth, Pagan clears his throat.

“There’s something that I need to tell you, that I should have told you ages ago.”

“Oh yeah? What’s that?” He wads up the chip wrapper and tosses it into the basket.

“Your art history professor is my sister.” It comes out in a bit of a rush.

“Oh shit…the Yuma you told me about the other day is _Dr. Lau?”_ Ajay frowns, thinking it over. “The same one you called a raging cunt that one time? Pretty accurate. But that’s like…why do you look so freaked out?”

Pagan sucks in a long breath, lets it out. “Because we’re…not close, she and I. And because I was afraid you would think I was keeping things from you.” He rubs at his earring. “And because she suspects, but has zero proof, that something is going on between us.”

Ajay frowns again. “She hated Mom. Hated the fact that you were with Mom.”

“Exactly. And now she’s accusing me of…well. Doing exactly as I’ve done. But I laughed in her face and told her she was being a paranoid bitch. Which also happens to be true.” He gusts a sigh. “There’s nothing she can do, I have way too much dirt on her myself…just, Ajay, have a care where she’s concerned.”

Ajay’s eyes snap to his at that, suddenly tense and wary like a wild thing. Pagan appreciates that instinct in him. “Anything in particular I should worry about?” he asks quietly.

“No, like I said, there’s nothing she can do. I could have her fired by noon tomorrow, if the notion took me, and she knows that. Hell, I was the one who got her the job in the first place! But just…watch her, and give her nothing to use against you. And,” he sighs. “You should probably stop wearing that sweater in public. She bought it for me as a gift and it had totally slipped my mind. Which is _such_ a goddamn shame, as it looks so nice on you. Much better than it does on me.”

Ajay grins at that. “That’s all right. I was going to give it back today anyway.” He strips it off and folds it neatly, setting it on the corner of the desk. At Pagan’s confused look, he says, “Don’t you remember? I thought you wanted to sleep with it,” suddenly a little shy. Pagan can’t help but go to him, and this time it’s Ajay pulling him down into his lap, Ajay rising up to kiss him until he’s breathless with it. “God, a whole week, before we can…this weekend can’t come fast enough,” he murmurs against Pagan’s mouth, and just like that, that sunshine feeling is back.

“I wholeheartedly agree, darling,” as he bends down to nuzzle at Ajay’s whiskery cheek, to kiss the tender skin of his throat, so gently. Wouldn’t do to send him off to class with marks.

 

That night, he stuffs the spare pillow inside that sweater, feeling like an absolute lunatic while he does it. But he holds it when he feels the anxiety creeping in, old fears that he used to drown, and Ajay's smell and the feel of it under his cheek comfort him as he sleeps.

 

***


	9. Lodestone

***

 

It’s not even a month’s worth of weekends later that Pagan gives Ajay the key code to his back door, to his little brick house on its perfectly normal little suburban street. It’s still amazing to him that such a plain but neatly kept place could contain someone like him, someone so…larger than life. They’re nearly the same size physically, but Pagan just takes up so much space; his emphatic gestures, his voice, dropping to a rough, honeyed murmur one moment, booming in laughter the next.

Always so intense, he muses, as he tracks across the side yard and lets himself through the back gate, careful to latch it behind him. Out of habit, he gives Pagan’s shabby tomatoes a drink from the watering can. It’s too cold for them to be worth much this time of year…but still. They’re hanging gamely on. He brushes off his hands and jogs up the two steps to the back door, but before he can even start punching in the code the door opens.

Pagan’s there waiting for him.

He’s wearing an apron, ladle in his hand, and the light is warm and the air is warm and redolent of garlic and basil and wine. Pagan pulls him into the kitchen with his free hand, that same warm light in his eyes and Ajay’s in his arms without thinking, like gravity pulling him in rather than Pagan’s hand, their foreheads touching. Close, and good.

Sometimes they only make it as far as the couch. At least, for the first round.

There was something about this week; he can’t put a finger on it, but he’s just… _burning_ for him and no amount of jacking off seems to be helping. Even Wednesday night’s phone conversation only cooled him off a little. Pushing into his own slick fist with Pagan’s voice murmuring in his ear about how he wished Ajay was sinking into him right then, listening to that voice go shaky with need as he touched himself too, listening to him come with a hoarse sob that had dragged him right over the edge as well…that had helped some, although it was lonely afterwards with no warm Pagan to hold onto. It wasn’t even his night to have the sweater, which he embarrassingly stuffs one of his pillows into and curls up against when it’s his turn.

That’s how he found himself with a bottle of lube in his own bathroom not an hour ago, working himself open and ready to throw himself on Pagan at the first opportunity. It had made for an…uncomfortable bus ride, his bag over his lap, but he’s here now, in Pagan’s arms finally, and he really hopes that the sauce can simmer for awhile.

“Oh, a little eager, aren’t we?” Pagan says with just the slightest hint of mockery in it, as Ajay roughly strips him of his apron. His shirt follows, the buttons managing to hang on despite the rough treatment. He can talk all he wants, but Pagan is just as ready for it; he jerks Ajay’s t-shirt off over his head, licking into his mouth and hands grabbing his ass not all that gently as Ajay gets them backed up to the couch, kicking his jeans off as Pagan works his own trousers down enough. He’s already mostly hard, good, as Ajay shoves him down and climbs on top of him, reaches down and palms him until Pagan’s writhing under him.

“Wait, Ajay, what are y…” as he lines them up and sinks down onto him without preamble, his eyes fluttering closed in bliss. Pagan gasps at the sensation of being so quickly engulfed in wet heat and laughs breathily, head thrown back against the back of the couch. “You saucy little shit! You…oh…oh _damn_ …”

Perfect, it’s perfect. They’ve been doing this for long enough that it’s easy, isn’t even uncomfortable, just heat and pleasure filling him up. Exactly what he wanted, as he takes Pagan’s flushed face between his hands, his dark eyes bright and happy and heavy-lidded with arousal. Beautiful.

He’s never been in love before, not really, but it might feel a little like this. Also like he’s falling off a cliff with no safety net, no guarantees. But it’s hard to worry about anything with Pagan inside him, big hands warm on his hips and this is enough, this feeling is enough, especially when Pagan shifts and wraps a strong arm around him so he can lean forward and get his mouth on one of Ajay’s nipples, sucking and nibbling just a little. The sensation jolts through him and leaves him panting. “Exquisite,” Pagan whispers, cool air rushing over it as Ajay flexes his thighs and moves, working himself on his hardness with shivers of delight, stroking him with his whole body as Pagan rises to meet him, as Pagan’s other hand strokes him in time.

 

Later, when they’re cuddled up and limp against each other on the couch, a strong smell works its way through Ajay’s post-coital haze. He lifts his head and sniffs at the air. “Hey, what’s burning?”

Pagan’s eyes snap open and he grunts, shoving at Ajay. “It’s the bloody garlic bread, fuck! I forgot all about it…”

Ajay rolls off the couch so he can get up and tries not to laugh at his wobbly gait and his trousers not tripping him only because of his clutching hand holding them up. Pagan disappears into the kitchen and the sounds of banging pans and swearing drift out. Ajay pokes his head around the doorway to see Pagan standing over the bread like he might just murder it.

“Not its fault that I distracted you. And it’s only, um, a little toasty on the edges, look. Still perfectly good. Let’s go wash up and I’ll fix it, just cut those bits off, c’mon…” Mollified, he lets Ajay herd him into the bathroom.

The food is amazing, as always. After they eat and inspect the couch for damage, they curl up together and flip through the channels for something to watch. Ajay notes that the big bottle that used to always sit by Pagan’s chair has gone missing and he holds him a little closer.

“Wait, wait, stop here!” Pagan says excitedly, which is puzzling because it’s some dumb comedy about teenage girls. Pagan must have seen it half a dozen times though because he knows all the lines by heart, which he annoyingly says before the characters do. But then his voice changes and gets deeper, and silkier, and he says those same dumb lines in a filthier and filthier tone and it’s hilarious and sort of hot all at once, until he’s writhing in laughter this time.

“Oh god stop it, you’re gonna kill me,” he manages to sputter, and Pagan is chortling at his inability to stop laughing, so pleased with himself. He snorts and laughs against Pagan until his belly hurts, until his eyes are streaming, and Pagan just _looks_ at him, this look like he’s the most precious thing in the world, there in the dark with the flickering light illuminating his face. Their lips meet with that warm, fluttering jolt that always happens when they kiss, and Pagan sighs happily against his mouth with a little shiver.

Later, when they’re in bed and he’s making love to Pagan, no other word for it, he pushes into him slow and warm and holds him close just the way he likes, with his hands cradling the back of his head. Pagan’s legs are wrapped around him, and when he’s as deep inside him as he can get he sighs that same contented sigh against Ajay’s ear.

Afterwards Ajay listens in the dark as Pagan’s breathing evens out. Sometimes he just likes to listen, but the way Pagan always wraps his arms around himself when he’s asleep makes him a little sad. Like he’s holding himself because no one else did for so long, or because he’s holding himself together or something, he can’t exactly put his finger on why. But if he tugs one of his arms free and moves close Pagan will always wrap his arms around him instead, even if he’s really out.

“It’s okay,” he whispers to him, even though he can’t hear, “you can hold me instead. I like it when you hold me.” He sleeps, wakes a little at the sound of the newspaper slapping against the front door early in the morning, sleeps again, Pagan’s arms warm and solid around him the whole night.

 

And that’s how their weekends go. They don’t even talk much; that’s for the daylight hours they spend together. Friday nights and Saturday mornings are for speaking with hands and skin pressed against skin, for staying in bed for hours, for joining together again and again.

Saturday evenings and Sundays he devotes to studying and homework, and occasionally he has to take the whole weekend to work on a project or a paper. When that happens, Pagan will call him late and remind him to get some goddamn rest, you must take care of yourself, my boy, drowsy and half asleep himself. He stays on the phone with Ajay until he drops off, voice warm and deep and soothing as he rambles on about nothing at all.

The weeks pass in a blur of work and more work and the grounding sweetness of holding Pagan’s hand under his desk, like a couple of kids sneaking around. Silly and giddy and it’s honestly hard to keep their hands off each other, way harder than it was before they started sleeping together on the regular. Funny, he thought that night on the rooftop would be the pinnacle of it…oh no.

It’s faintly ridiculous that holding Pagan’s hand and talking to him are the highlights of his workweek…but that doesn’t make it any less true.

Listening to Pagan lecture the other three days a week provide a nice buffer for his sanity before he has to sit in Dr. Lau’s classroom and face off against her. He watches her with a studied nonchalantness that would’ve made Pagan proud, if he could see it. He sits in the front and gives her nothing, his face a mask of bland politeness. He turns in all his work in ink to help prevent possible tampering, and when exam day rolls around and she tells them to spread out to prevent cheating, he hauls his desk right next to hers and completely ignores her angry, narrowed gaze.

Other than that, things are pretty normal; work, sleep, and repeat; remember to go to the gym occasionally and not protest too much when Pagan tries to feed him, which he seems to love doing for some reason.

Pretty normal…until they’re not.

 

***

 

_3:02 pm - Pick you up at 4:30?_

_3:04 pm - Shit, I told some guys from_  
_my other class that I would go to that_  
_stupid bonfire thing with them._  
_Let me text them and tell them no_

_3:05 pm - No, don’t do that,_  
_you should be with your friends!_  
_Go have fun, do college things_

_3:06 pm - Are you sure?_

_3:08 pm - Of course!_  
_Just be careful, don’t drink too much,_  
_blah blah you know._  
_Call me if you need me_

_3:10 pm - Well they’re engineering guys_  
_and it’s kind of a school thing so it shouldnt get_  
_too crazy…are you really sure though?_

_3:11 pm - My boy, of course I’m sure._  
_You need to have friends as well,_  
_and besides, you know where I am_

_3:12 pm - Okay, I’ll see you later then :)_

 

_3:14 pm - Have fun!_

 

Of course he’s disappointed, but he can’t take up all of Ajay’s free time, it’s not…healthy, or something, even if he’d like nothing better. And he works so hard. He needs time to cut loose, be young, enjoy himself.

But that was Friday afternoon.

It’s now Saturday evening, and he still hasn’t heard from Ajay. He half heartedly grades some essays for awhile, but they’re so terrible that they actually depress him. He gives up on them and tries to find a book to read on his tablet, just something to distract his mind for a bit, and one with a tacky cover catches his eye, a buxom woman in a space suit. Perfect.

Apparently she’s stranded alone on a space station for some undisclosed reason and the leader of an alien nation has chosen her to be his mate, with no input on her part. Complete sexist drivel, and poorly written to boot. However, the author makes several assertions about the physical nature of the pair’s relationship, more than one of which Pagan is fairly sure is anatomically improbable, perhaps even verging on impossible. Especially when the tentacles are taken into consideration.

This entertains him for a few more chapters, until he finds himself re-reading the same paragraph over and over, thinking of Ajay accidentally getting too drunk, of getting hit by a car, being robbed, being injured in a hundred different ways…or just passing out in the company of strangers and no one caring enough to kick him over onto his face so he doesn’t choke on his own puke. It’s not like he hasn’t seen it happen before, that and worse. He tosses his tablet to the side and rubs his face.

Ajay’s hardly a child to be fussed over. There’s something quiet and wary in his nature, like a wild animal that’s always watchful, and he just doesn’t seem the type to do something _truly_ stupid.

Which makes his radio silence all the more worrisome.

 

_8:06 pm – Just a bit concerned about you,_  
_darling boy. Figured to hear from you by now._  
_Text me when you can_

 

That message sits, and sits, marked Delivered. The next morning, Sunday, it still says Delivered.

He has half a mind to drive over there and see what’s going on, as he’s starting to feel as if something is very, very wrong…but still, he holds back. Perhaps he’s merely lost his phone somewhere. It’s not like he hasn’t done the same thing countless times; once the damn thing dies it’s near impossible to find. He absentmindedly left his in the medicine chest for two entire days once.

He keeps managing to talk himself out of going, afraid of being overbearing, smothering…but he doesn’t really manage to sleep that night, either. At least, not very well.

The next morning, Monday, red-eyed and surly from stress and lack of sleep, he has to mark Ajay ‘absent’ on his attendance sheet.

 

Pagan works late that evening, or at least stares at his computer until late; not like he has anything to do but go home and stare at those walls instead. He’s shoved his anxiety down so many times today he’s exhausted with it, like wrestling a fucking bear in his head over and over and _over._ Every time he even begins to relax, it rushes him again. He ought to just go home and spend an hour or three on the treadmill, just sweat and endorphins and the sound of his own gasping breaths. Try to outrun this feeling.

He’s so keyed up that his phone going off startles him badly.

Yuma.

 

_6:10 pm – I have something you need to see,_  
_I’ll be over in ten_

 

Goddamn if that doesn’t make his stomach clench up tighter than it already is. Surely Ajay going AWOL isn’t connected. Surely not. He rubs his face exhaustedly and braces himself for a fight. It’s always a fight.

And sure enough, almost to the minute, Yuma jerks the door open without preamble, a manila folder in her hand.

“Most people bother to knock, Yuma dear,” he says, trying to keep the strain out of his voice.

Her feral grin doesn’t bode well. She always looks the happiest when she’s making him miserable.

“Noticed a certain someone was missing from my class today. Have you seen him recently?”

He just stares her down, not bothering to respond. “The point please, Yuma. It’s late. I’m fucking tired. So do get on with it, if you don’t mind.”

She laughs, an ugly sound. “Well, I’ve certainly seen him recently. _This_ is what your little boy toy was up to the other night…propositioning _me._ He does get around, doesn’t he? Definitely not my type, but I took him home with me like he wanted just to fuck around with him. And because you needed to _see._ I don’t know how much clearer I can make it…he’s been doing nothing but playing with you!”

Yuma flings the folder onto his desk, forcefully enough that the glossy photos inside slide across the wood.

Oh god. He wants to look away, because just glancing at them makes him feel like he’s being stabbed somewhere important. No, somewhere _vital._

“Oh no, brother of mine, I want you to take a good, long look at these. I’m doing you a favor and holding up a mirror to what you are too weak and blind to see for yourself; how you’ve let yet _another_ Ghale shit all over your life! Will you never fucking learn?”

The worst part is that he recognizes that look on Ajay’s face; his flushed cheeks, lips red and moist, his heavy-lidded eyes.

 _Maybe I just have a thing for professors._ Said with a laugh. Such a fine joke.

Yuma’s voice drops low, almost sad. “You could have been a great man. We had such big dreams, such ambitions, the two of us…and you let them take all of that away. First that manipulative bitch, and then her conniving brat.” She cocks her head at him, like she’s examining some exotic species of animal that she can’t fathom at all. “You could have been President of this university by now, with me at your side. Instead…well. You know how pathetic you are. Congratulations, I hope the sex was worth it.”

“Get. Out.” It comes out as some sort of strangled hiss. He doesn’t have enough air in his lungs to bellow it in her face the way he wants. He wants to rage, to _throw_ her out the door…but all he can do is sit frozen, those damning pictures still strewn across his desk.

“Fine. I’ve said what needed saying,” she throws over her shoulder on her way out, leaving him alone.

 

Alone.

 

In the very back of his locked filing cabinet he has a small stash of something strong enough to, at least temporarily, kill this kind of pain…but that will have to wait. He needs Ajay to see these. He needs Ajay to look at them, and he needs to watch his face while he does it. That will tell him all he needs to know.

If Pagan hadn’t been so exhausted and emotionally rattled, so devastated, his shrewd mind would have realized that things weren’t exactly adding up, photographic proof or not.

 

_6:20 pm – I hope to god you’re on campus._  
_Need to see you right now_

 

_6:21 pm – whats wrong_

 

What’s wrong, he says. What’s _wrong._ He’s mildly shocked at the amount of effort it takes to not put his fist through his computer monitor. And these new modern ones are so light and thin too, it would sail spectacularly across the room…he switches the lamp off, wanting the dark. Shoves his fists into his pockets when they won’t unclench, and waits.

 

When Ajay opens the door, he pushes it just wide enough to make a gap for his body to slide though, the light from the hallway silhouetting him. He steps inside warily, his footsteps light like the floor might give under him, like something might be lying in ambush for him.

Perhaps that’s a little true.

“Missed you in class this morning,” he says neutrally, and his voice doesn’t shake.  He refuses to let it.

“Yeah, sorry. I wasn’t feeling well.” Flat and strange, and Ajay won't look at him.

“Oh? Perhaps you had a bit too much to _drink_ the other night,” and he can’t quite keep a touch of that rage out of it.

“Something like that I guess…Pagan what is this,” in that same strange monotone.

 

Pagan reaches out, fingers trembling minutely, and pulls the lamp cord.

 

When Ajay gazes at those pictures with something like mounting horror in his eyes, with _recognition_ in his face, something shuts down inside of him.

Something gentle in him that’s been slowly coaxed out furls up.

“I see these are not a surprise to you,” and Ajay doesn’t even respond. “You didn’t have to pretend to _care,_ you know,” Pagan says harshly. “I would have fucked you anyway, would have let you fuck me. You didn’t have to play at…well. I would have given you what you wanted, no strings attached. A fun little fling, and you could have gotten it out of your system and moved on, I wouldn’t have minded.” A lie, but it would have been much better than this. “But instead, you’ve made a complete and utter fool of me. Or I’ve made it of myself. I’m not quite sure anymore.”

Ajay just…stares, seemingly beyond words. Perhaps that’s for the best.

“Well,” Pagan says, getting up and opening the door, proud of his composure. His hand barely shakes on the doorknob. “I think we’re done here, don’t you?” He needs him gone so that he can get royally, _royally_ fucked up.

“I…”

“No, no, you see, I’m afraid this is the point where you _get out of my office._ Official business only from now on. Find someone else for your work study hours. I hear Dr. Harmon’s single.”

With that, he grasps Ajay’s shoulder. For a sudden, searing moment, Pagan wants to clamp down, to dig his fingers in, to _hurt_ him…and that terrifies him. Spooks him badly enough that he switches his grip to one on just his jacket and gently, deliberately propels him out and shuts the door. Doesn’t try to throttle him with his own hood strings. Doesn’t even slam the fucking thing. Shuts it very firmly between them and locks it for good measure…and only then lets his legs go out from under him. He slides down the wood and collapses to the carpet on his ass much like that first day he saw Ajay again, very much like that first day, the shock reverberating through him.

But this time, there’s no following joy.  Oh no.

When he’s certain his legs will hold him again, he reaches in his pocket for his keys, to unlock the filing cabinet.

 

Pagan never really contemplated actually doing this sort of thing at _work_ , as he carefully cuts a row of lines on his very desk, but it feels as if everything is already in shambles, as if everything is already burning around him. Might as well throw his integrity onto the flames too, as he wills his hands to stop shaking, his iron control from earlier gone. He takes another big swig from the much more socially acceptable bottle of brandy that he had stowed in another drawer.

Not the smartest combo to be indulging in, but fuck it. He learned many years ago that there were chemical means to stop him from thinking so goddamn much, after…after everything that had happened, and that this was a way to go null-state for awhile. Just to get that stabbing feeling to stop for a few hours.

 _Maybe I just have a thing for professors._ It won’t get out of his _fucking_ head, like a sing-song refrain.

 

Nothing but white euphoria in his mind after it hits, as he cleans up, tidying away the evidence. Oh, and it’s _nice,_ it’s very, very nice. Probably way too much, his tolerance is…

…walking down the snowy sidewalk, he ought to be cold, with no coat on, but it’s just the opposite, he’s burning up. That’s all right though, not like he cares, a lot of things seem to be burning…

…something strikes his elbow sharply enough to hurt through his blissful haze. He turns and swings in pure reaction, smashing his fist full-force into the metal post box that he stumbled into. That hurts too, raw and red. The accompanying rage all but blinds him for a moment and then bleeds out of him as he staggers.

No matter.

The street lights are beginning to come on, bright white and buzzing like the light in his head. When he gazes past them, the buildings in the distance look very familiar. He squints. He knows that shape, the cant of the roof. Ajay.

Ajay will be there. When he thinks about him, he grows furious all over again, a red wash of anger but this time it’s paired with hot arousal, all of it mixed together and threatening to drown him. Suddenly unsteady, he crouches so he doesn’t fall over while that tide washes over him, leaving him gulping in the cold air like he can’t get enough of it.

Ruby droplets drip drip, into the clean white snow, like little gems. He watches them with bemusement for awhile. But he can’t stay here, he has a place he needs to go. To Ajay. It doesn’t matter that the very thought of him aches and burns. It doesn’t matter.

He has to go. His heart is pulling him.  Pulling him.

 

***


	10. The Predator's True Face

***

 

Ajay has no good memory of how he got here, all of it a blur. He was looking at those pictures of himself in Pagan’s office, with no idea of how they came into existence, but he recognizes that house in the background of them. Her house. Waking up there to her hard laughter and with no clothes on. And then later, the worst hangover of his life, feeling like he was going to genuinely die, wanting Pagan with everything in him but not able to bear reaching out, to have to tell him...what, exactly? He doesn’t understand, doesn’t understand _anything._

Pagan’s wounded face, closing down and going hard too, just like he knew it would when he found out about…whatever it was that happened…

…suddenly he’s on the top floor of the Science Building, staring at the ladder to the roof. He climbs up slowly, sure that the hatch at the top will be locked, but it swings up easily when he pushes the latch.

Unlike last time, the roof is a field of untracked white instead of black tarmac, but the sunset looks just the same. Ajay crouches down next to some air conditioning equipment and huddles in on himself. If he stays still enough, holds on hard enough, maybe he can hold himself together. Maybe he can keep from bolting in animal fear. Maybe he can keep himself from throwing his body at Pagan’s office door in blind panic until he opens it.

And then what? No welcome there, no warm regard in his eyes, no…

Breathing hard, Ajay tries to make himself cry, just to get it out of the way, but the tears won’t come. They sit lodged and burning and aching in the same place that flutters happily when Pagan touches him, when Pagan kisses him with that light in his eyes.

_You didn’t have to pretend to care, you know._

Ajay drops his head onto his knees and stays tucked up there for hours, until all the light fades and the stars begin to come out. He tries not to look at them.

 

His phone goes off.

Ajay fumbles it out with numb fingers, nearly ripping the fabric of his pocket in his haste…but it isn’t Pagan.

 

_10:24 – listen I know you dont know_  
_this number but this is Rabi from class._  
_I didn kno who else to get ahold of but_  
_I have dr. Min in my apt. and do you think_  
_you could come get him?_

 

Ajay blinks. None of the words in that sentence go together. He rubs his eyes in case he’s misreading it…no. Disaster. Utter disaster. Has to be.

But that’s a place he can get to, a destination that won’t have a barrier between them.

 

_10:25 – WTF? Where? Address?_

 

_10:27 – 1517 #4, on college row_  
_pls hurry, he’s scaring me a lil_

_10:28 – shit, I’ll brt_

 

It doesn’t take him long to sprint the few blocks to College Row, that panic lending him speed and his heart in his throat the whole way. Even if he didn’t know where it was, he could have found it by the wall of noise coming from the place. 1517 looks weirdly like his own apartment block; the buildings are the same design, same layout…except his is mostly quiet immigrant families. He would have quickly gone insane if he had to live over here. Almost every door is thrown wide open despite the cold, everybody drinking and dancing, like a block party. On a Monday. Does this shit go on every fucking night?

Probably.

Ajay finds Rabi outside of #4, looking nervous. That door is mercifully shut.

“Okay, what in the everliving _fuck_ is going on?” He has to yell to be heard over the music.

“Shit, man,” Rabi says. “I saw him staggering up the street up there, and I thought he was hurt or drunk at first but I think he’s on something else, I dunno. Maybe all three, he has like, fucking blood on him, dude. I ran up there and the first words out of his mouth were ‘Where’s Ajay?’”

A chill runs up Ajay’s back.

“So I said, hey, he’s down at my apartment, just follow me, and he did. I don’t think anybody saw him…I didn’t want him to get busted or anything, shit! He was acting so weird…well, you know, he’s always fucking weird, but _way weird…_ ”

Ajay’s heard enough.

“Where is he?” he says, pushing past Rabi and not waiting for an answer. He swings the door open…no Pagan. Living room, kitchenette, all empty. Except for what is presumably Rabi’s bedroom door, which is shut…with the back of a chair jammed under the handle.

“No fuckin’ way, Rabi!” Ajay’s a little appalled. “How long have you had him locked in there?”

“Not that long! Maybe like, an hour? I’m telling you, he was scaring me, so I told him you were in there and shut the door behind him, and then I had to look up your number in the school directory…just, please Ajay, please get him out of here before he flips his shit and kills me or something, fuck…”

“Okay, look…I’m gonna go in there and talk to him and you just…stay out here, okay? I’ll shut the door behind me, he’s not gonna hurt you. Just…Jesus, just calm down.”

The chair is seriously wedged; Rabi must have jammed it under there _hard_ in his fear. It makes a raw scraping noise that sets his teeth on edge when he pulls it free.

Something about pushing this door open makes his palms sweat, just like that first day that he went to Pagan’s office hours months ago, a lifetime ago, a millennium ago. Quietly, quietly. It’s dark in there.

A narrow strip of light from the door falls across Pagan’s unblinking eyes.

He’s sitting calmly on the edge of the bed, legs crossed neatly, but his _eyes_ …

They’re like the eyes of something predatory, but not like a thing that would like to stalk and eat him. No, he’s like some kind of wounded animal, like a tiger or something that’s been caught in a trap. Eyes cold and savage, and wary, and in pain, looking for the exit, the chance to escape…and not afraid to bite and claw some motherfuckers on his way out. He might have already done just that; the knuckles of his right hand are all scabbed and bleeding, and he has blood smeared across his face, probably from his nose. Ajay understands why Rabi was so freaked out now.

Unbidden, the thought comes to him: maybe he’s not really the sarcastic, forgetful, eccentric professor that he lets everyone see. Maybe he’s had us all fooled all along into thinking this part of him doesn’t exist, this fierce and bloodied predator.

Maybe this is his true face.

All he knows is that Pagan would never, ever hurt him, as he slowly and gently rests his hands on his shoulders and when he doesn’t flinch away, loops his arms around his neck.

“You didn’t give me the chance to explain,” he says, before anything else. “What I recognized in those pictures was the background, the house itself. I woke up naked with zero memory of how I got there, of any of that stuff. I only had a beer and a half. After the second half I started getting really dizzy and then I must have blacked out because then _she_ was there.  Dr. Lau was there and laughing, and she grabbed me by the arm and threw me out the front door where everybody could see and pitched my clothes out after me. And then I was so sick…I didn’t know what to do…how could I go and tell you that? Your own sister? I didn’t know what to do…”

He’s been studiously not thinking of that for days now, of any of that stuff, of the burning, humiliating shame of it. Trying and mostly failing not to think of just how badly Pagan’s been hurt by it, but now he finds that the tears are squeezing their way out anyway, surprising him; fat, hot tears dripping onto Pagan’s shoulder, still stiff and hard under him.

“I’m so sorry, Pagan, I didn’t know how to tell you. I don’t…I don’t know what she did to me. Maybe nothing, I went home and took a long shower and I…I couldn’t tell, you know? I think she must’ve paid somebody or bribed them or something, at the bonfire. To put something in my beer, because she wasn’t there.” He thinks back; all the memories of that evening are hazy, dark and firelit with big black gaps. “No, I’m almost sure of it, she wasn’t there…but I have no idea how I got from there to her house…” He sniffs, tries to rub the wetness off of Pagan’s shoulder. “I wish…fuck, I wish you’d talk to me. I think you’re someplace far away, and you’re hurting, and I wish you’d come back to me. Please.”

“I’m going to kill her, you know.” Pagan’s voice is rusty and a little congested, but his tone is perfectly polite, perfectly conversational…and he absolutely one hundred percent means it. Ajay shivers against him.

“No, you can’t, Pagan, you can’t…even though I…I kind of want you to,” surprising even himself.

“And why ever not?” he says in that same polite tone, his muscles still all knotted hard.

“Because she might hurt you somehow, and even if she didn’t the cops would come and arrest you and take you away from me and that scares the hell out of me.” He swallows hard. Now or never. “Because I’m pretty sure that I’m falling in love with you and I’ve never been in love before, not like this. It’s…it’s fucking terrifying.”

“Ajay, Ajay…” Pagan whispers, and finally, all his muscles unlock and he goes nearly limp against him, shuddering. Suddenly his arms are around him too, pulling him close. “I know good and well that I’ve gone and fallen in love with you…does that make it more or less terrifying?”

“Less,” Ajay whispers. “A lot less. It would be so shitty if I felt this way and you didn’t love me back.” He kisses him, heedless of the iron-salt tang of the blood on his mouth, holds him hard in overwhelming relief as Pagan locks his hands behind his back and hangs on like his life depends on it.

Ajay turns his sleeve inside-out and tries to clean him up a little. “What did you take? And what in the hell made you come here looking for me?”

Pagan presses his head into Ajay’s chest, embarrassed. “Coke,” he says, muffled and still rusty. “My old go-to. A significant amount of it. Some brandy. Stupid, so stupid.” He makes a snuffling sound, and Ajay doesn’t think he’s crying but it still sounds a little sad. “I’m so very sorry, darling boy, I…I didn’t give you the benefit of the doubt, or let you explain, or anything…I just went off the deep end, like a lunatic. Can you possibly forgive me?”

Ajay just hugs him tighter, runs fingers through his messy, sweat-tangled hair. “Of course, just…Jesus, take it easy with the hard drugs, yeah? Don’t fucking worry me like that again, you could’ve given yourself a goddamned heart attack or something,” he mumbles into his hair, as Pagan rucks his shirt and jacket up, just enough so that he can get his hands on Ajay’s bare back. They sit there for a long while, just holding, trying to apologize through touch, nuzzling at each other from time to time.

Eventually, mostly sobered up, Pagan raises his head a little from Ajay’s shoulder and looks around him in the dim light. “I have to confess…I don’t even know where here is.”

And Ajay laughs at that, the tension broken. “You’re going to die when I tell you. We’re up on College Row. Rabi Rana’s bedroom.”

“Rabi…from _class?_ The Shitlord?” Pagan blinks. “No, you’re just fucking with me now.”

“Swear to god. He’s out in the living room. Listen,” he prods Pagan’s arm for emphasis, “you owe him big time. He’s the one who got you off the street before somebody called the cops, understand? And then texted me. You freaked him out so bad that he locked you in here.”

“I have no recollection of any of it. I was walking, I hit something…not a person, but something metal. I don’t remember what it was though. God, I’ve been such an _idiot._ I’m lucky to not have broken my fucking hand.”

Ajay lets his head rest against Pagan's again, everything catching up to him.  He can't even imagine how tired Pagan must be, but they can't stay here.  “Let’s go back to your house, okay? Can we do that? Give me your keys and I’ll run and go get your car and we can take a shower and go to bed. We can…we can figure shit out in the morning.”

“Oh god, yes please.”

He sends Pagan to go clean up in the bathroom while he goes out to talk to Rabi. He had been sitting on the couch playing a video game, but he jumps up soon as Ajay opens the door. “He’s okay now, but I’m going to run back to campus and get his car and then we’ll get out of your hair, all right?”

“Uh, yeah…sure man. That’s cool.”

Ajay glares at him. “I appreciate you texting me, but not a goddamn _word._ To anybody. You hear me?”

“Dude, you don’t have to tell _me_ that. Are you fucking kidding? And get on _his_ bad side? Fuck that, bro. My lips are sealed. Things are shitty enough without Dr. Min pissed at me too.”

Ajay’s not sure how much he actually cares, but as he jingles Pagan’s keys in his hand and listens to him splash water in the bathroom, he considers how much he owes Rabi. Least he could do would be to listen for a minute. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”

“You know what’s going on with the election, right?” When Ajay shakes his head, Rabi looks stunned. “The election for Student Council President? Ohhhh man, Ajay…you gotta pay better attention, bro! See, it turns out that Amita tampered with the vote count somehow…nobody’s sure how she managed it yet, but when they were going to give it to Sabal by default, it came up that he had sabotaged it too! Like, what the fuck!” He throws his hands up in a weird mix of disgust and glee. “And I am so pissed bro, because they fired me right after all this shit went down. I didn’t even get to broadcast my special investigative report I had lined up…”

“Wait, hold up,” Ajay says. “Do you mean to tell me that they both managed to sabotage _each others’_ vote counts? Like, how does that even work? And who’s gonna be President now, if they’re both disqualified?”

“Dude, beats the hell out of me, how they did it! I heard that they got in an awful fight and Sabal blacked her eye and then she kicked him in the balls…that shit is so wild, man! Now they’re going to make some kid the President, since she had the most nominations behind them.”

Rabi’s stories are always hard to follow. “What, like a kid-kid?”

“Yeah! Some girl named Bhadra, she’s only fourteen or something, like…like Sheldon Cooper or some shit. Super smart. There’s a word for that, but I don’t remember it…”

“Prodigy, Mr. Rana,” Pagan says from the bathroom, muffled behind the door. The water’s stopped running.

“Yeah, that’s it! Prodigy.”

He needs to get moving, but there’s still one thing. “You said you got fired? From the station?”

Rabi looks at his feet and sighs. “Yeah…I guess I might have talked about bidets once, and they didn’t like that, and then I said something about how if Amita won, how cool it would be for her to…snort coke off a stripper’s ass. A male stripper, though! Like, I didn’t want to imply that she’s gay or anything like that, not that there’s anything wrong with that, I just thought maybe she’d prefer a dude’s ass but I could be wrong and she could like snorting coke off of asses of both genders…”

Pagan’s snorted, sputtering laughter from the bathroom buoys his heart.

“You shithead,” he says fondly to Rabi. “I’ll be back in like ten minutes.”

 

Running again, it only takes him eight. He’s a little rusty since he hasn’t driven in awhile, but it’s only a few blocks. He parks Pagan’s Volvo out behind the building to avoid the crowd of drunk college kids out front.

When we walks back through the door, he beholds the entirely surreal sight of Pagan Min and Rabi Ray Rana sitting on a rundown couch together, playing Madden Football. As he stands there, mouth probably agape, Pagan swears in Cantonese. “The rules of this game are so idiotic. Don’t you have a rugby game? I know rugby, played it at school; nice, sensible rules. Like now! Right there, why can’t he bloody well kick for met…yardage there? It makes no goddamn sense…”

“Well, it won’t let you do anything else until you snap it. X, Dr. Min, push the X button, you’re gonna run out of ti…there you go!”

“Oh, blast it,” Pagan mutters, as he fumbles the pass.

“This is seriously fucking entertaining, but are you ready to go?” Ajay says, and Pagan gets up and hands the controller back to Rabi, just a little unsteadily.

“I…it would seem that I owe you a debt of gratitude,” he says to Rabi, a little stiff, a little awkward.

“Oh, uh…no problem, ma…I mean, Dr. Min. No worries.”

“Well, I do appreciate you helping me.” And with that he sweeps out the door.

“Thanks Rabi.” Something occurs to Ajay that has him narrowing his eyes again. “You never asked why he was looking for me.”

“Shit, man…seriously not my my business. As long as he doesn’t fail me, that’s all I fucking care about. I _nee_ d that grade. You think maybe…you can maybe put in a good word?”

Ajay laughs. “Quit cracking shitty jokes in the middle of lecture and you’ve probably got it.”

When he pulls the door shut behind him, it’s obvious that Pagan has no idea of where to go and seems a little overwhelmed by all the loud and drunken revelry, but he keeps his back turned so no one can see his face. “Here, this way,” Ajay says, and leads him through the outside stairwell and behind the building to where his car is.

The slight unsteadiness was a put-on for Rabi; he has to lean on Ajay’s shoulder to get to the parking lot.  He shucks off his jacket and throws it around him. “Did you lose your coat somewhere? You have to be cold, it’s fucking freezing out here…” It’s an indicator of Pagan’s misery that he doesn’t object, doesn’t even answer, just burrows up in the warm fabric. Ajay didn’t give the car time to warm up before he drove it from campus, so it’s nearly as cold as outside when they get in. Pagan hunches up with his teeth trying to chatter, his hair still damp with sweat. Ajay turns the heater up full-blast and reaches for him, lending his own body heat.

“I feel like shit,” Pagan mumbles against his neck.

“Of course you feel like shit,” Ajay tells him, kindly leaving off the _you idiot_ he justifiably could have added. “You blew all your serotonin in one go. Gotta let it recharge. You want some soup or something when we get you home? Hot shower and a little food?”

Pagan sniffs and wipes at his nose, which has mercifully stopped bleeding. “Depends. Do you come with the shower?”

Ajay rolls his eyes. Incorrigible. “You really wanna negotiate now? Fine, I’ll get in with you if you let me clean up your hand.”

“Deal,” he says, with a little smile that looks like it’s making an attempt at being seductive. His face sobers, however, when he sees Ajay’s serious expression.

Ajay sucks in a breath, lets it out. He sits up and puts his hand on the gearshift to drive them home. “I love you, Dr. Min.”

“I love you too, Mr. Ghale,” Pagan murmurs, as he rests his hand on top of Ajay’s, interlacing their fingers. “But I’m fairly sure you knew that already.”

 

Thankfully, the roads are mostly clear of snow and Ajay manages not to slide on the remaining ice patches and wreck Pagan’s nice car. As they’re getting out though, Ajay reaches and grasps Pagan’s elbow to help steady him and he hisses and flinches a little. A cursory examination once they’re inside reveals a shirtsleeve bloody from elbow to wrist; it didn’t show against his dark suit jacket. Once Pagan works the shirt off it’s not as bad as he was afraid it would be. Mostly bruising and the skin split and torn across the bone, although from the amount of blood it’s obvious that the alcohol didn’t help matters any.

Pagan twists his head to see it better. “I believe that whatever it was that I hit might have hit me first.”

It’s mostly stopped bleeding, it and his hand both, so Ajay just gives him a paper towel to hold against it so he can lie on the couch while he figures out the food situation. Egg noodles and cans of broth in the pantry, half an onion and some celery in the bottom of the crisper drawer that’s not too wrinkly yet, a couple of frozen chicken breasts…perfect. Chicken soup is one of the few things that he can make that turns out reliably decent.

As he’s frying the onion and some garlic in butter in the bottom of a stock pot, Pagan groans from the living room. “You, sir, are a gentleman. A goddamn angel.” After he gets everything chopped up and thrown into the pot and lets it simmer for awhile, Ajay gives his soup a taste. Good, maybe a little heavy on the garlic, but that’s all right. He’s going to eat some too, then they won’t be able to smell it on each other. The best way to not have garlic breath is to make sure everybody has garlic breath, after all, as he smiles and grabs bowls and spoons. Pagan joins him at the table still shirtless and smelling strongly and unpleasantly of drug sweat and brandy, so much so that Ajay shifts away from him, but Pagan eats his soup like it’s the best thing he’s ever had. He spoons it up as neatly and precisely as he always does, but it disappears fast.

“My god, I don’t deserve you,” he mutters at his empty bowl, as Ajay takes it and refills it and pushes it in front of him again, along with some crackers he found in a cabinet.

“I think you’re still high,” Ajay says with a laugh, and settles in with his own bowl.

Once he’s fed, Pagan’s able to navigate the stairs with aplomb, only having to grab the banister once, but Ajay keeps a hand in his belt all the same. Once they get undressed and into the shower, Pagan seems perfectly content to just lean against him and let the hot water run over them. Ajay rests his hand against his chest. His heart is still beating too fast, too hard. “You’re probably not going to be able to sleep, are you,” he says, leaning his head against his.

“No, probably not, not for awhile longer,” Pagan says, running a hand along Ajay’s side, up and down, stroking along his ribs. Just that shouldn’t feel as good as it does, but as Pagan’s hand slides down to his hip, thumb rubbing and then back up, he can feel himself getting hard against Pagan’s hip. “So sensitive,” Pagan murmurs, and lets his fingers drag wetly across his nipple. “Always so ready for me, wanting my hands on you.”

“What I _want_ ,” Ajay growls, “is for you to scrub your hand and elbow out and wash the coke sweat off so I can get you bandaged up and put to bed so that your heart will slow the _fuck down_.” He gently brushes Pagan’s wet hair out of his eyes, softly rubs his thumb over the bridge of his nose in contrast to the harshness of his words. “Don’t give me that look, either.” Only Pagan could manage to express contrition and mule-stubborness at the same time.

Once they’re out and dried off, he has Pagan sit on the bed for doctoring, and his hand is red and purple and swollen to twice the size of the other one. “Jesus,” Ajay murmurs. “We ought to get this x-rayed.”

“All’s in working order, my boy, see?” Pagan wiggles his fingers…not easily, but they all move. Clenches his fist loosely. “A little ice and all will be well.” Ajay roots around in the freezer and finds an old bag of frozen corn. It’ll do. He also grabs a couple of bottles of water and makes him drink them both, standing over him to make sure he does it while the ice is on his hand. But when Ajay comes back with Pagan’s old shoebox of first aid shit, he suddenly won’t let him touch it to bandage his split and raw knuckles. Keeps shifting around, twitching out of reach, moving just as Ajay tries to get the ointment on. He’s exhausted; the hellish day is catching up to him and his frustration is building and it’s getting harder and harder to not take it out on him, especially when he finally looks up into Pagan’s face and sees the mean little grin there.

That…that pushes him over an edge in his mind, and he flings the roll of gauze in his hand with some kind of strangled noise that feels ripped out of him. He wants, _wants_ to bellow _fine, let it get infected then_ into Pagan’s face like some kind of fucking child, but he stands there and just…quivers instead.

Pagan stares up at him. “I’m so sorry…I only meant to tease you,” he says, so softly, like he’s the wild animal that might attack or bolt. “I’m so sorry,” he says again, and gets up and draws him in, warm and skin to skin, neither of them having bothered with clothes. “This is all my fault. Yuma and I…since you were small we’ve been fighting a sort of cold war, and she used you as a weapon to try and wound me. To teach me some kind of a _lesson._ But she’ll never harm you again, dearest Ajay, I won’t let it happen. I let my guard down. Never again.”

Ajay leans his forehead against Pagan’s shoulder but he can’t make himself relax, muscles hard and trembling.

“Shhhh,” Pagan whispers, “I want to show you something.”

He leads Ajay over to the side of the bed and crouches down, motions for Ajay to do the same. “Put your hand just here,” he says, and when Ajay feels under the bedframe his fingers touch metal, some kind of metal box bolted to the underside of the frame. It feels like a safe or a firebox. Pagan takes his hand and guides his fingers into four grooves set into the top, lays his fingers alongside his. He presses Ajay’s fingers down; index finger twice, pinky, ring finger. On the last press, the box beeps and clicks and slaps a big handgun right into his palm, and he nearly drops it in shock. He’s not exactly…unfamiliar with guns, having done his share of seriously stupid things and running with truly bad crowds, but Pagan is good at making even him forget just what he is. The weapon that Pagan is.

Pagan’s hand caresses his bare shoulders. “No one will ever lay a hand on you again, my love…I swear it. No one,” he whispers low and hot in his ear, as Ajay lifts the gun to eye level and watches the light glint off the steel, their fingers still entwined around the grip. “Remember the code: index twice, little finger, ring finger,” quietly hypnotic. “Although if it comes to actually needing it, I’ll have it and you’ll be behind me. You’ve taken such good care of me…now let me take care of you,” and brushes the knuckles of his uninjured hand along his cheek, his chest pressed against Ajay’s arm, and Ajay shivers against him.

He wants to believe that.

He has to go retrieve the roll of gauze while Pagan stows the gun back in the safe. “Leave it, it’s fine,” Pagan says, but he’s not the only one who can be stubborn as Ajay wrestles him back down to sit on the bed, and this time he stays as still as a stone and lets him bandage both the hand and his elbow.

Afterwards he lays back and pulls Ajay with him, on top of him and doesn’t stop until they’re entwined full length. Even their feet are pressed together. Pagan reaches and pulls the lamp chain, tugs the blankets over them.

They lay there together for a time in the cool darkness, his ear on Pagan’s chest.

“You’ve been awfully quiet,” Pagan murmurs, nosing at his hair. His heart is finally starting to slow down, growing quiet too.

Ajay rubs his face against the satiny skin of his chest and tries to relax. “Don’t know what to say. Besides that the last four days have been complete shit.” Pagan’s arms tighten around him.

“I hurt you,” he whispers, barely above the sound of air moving in the vents, the quiet hum of the refrigerator downstairs. “I hurt you, and I want to make you forget that I ever did.” Pagan’s hands stroke up and down his back, the bandage on the right one making it a little rougher.

“Just…keep doing that. Keep doing what you’re doing,” Ajay murmurs. Pagan probably meant something sexual, but he doesn’t care; that can wait. This is what he wants. For Pagan to stay still under him, a stable point in the world; to be held close by him, to feel like he can keep having this. Only a few hours ago he was huddled on a snowy rooftop, convinced that he’d lost him for good.

Emotional whiplash. He closes his eyes.

“I’ll never shut another door between us,” Pagan murmurs into his hair, and Ajay slides a hand up to lay his fingers across his lips.

“Shhh, I know…it’s okay. You don’t have to say you’re sorry anymore. Just…” He has no idea how to articulate what he wants or even exactly what it is he wants from him, so he settles for removing his hand and kissing him instead. Pagan almost immediately tries to deepen it and he pulls away. “Just be easy for a little while, y’know?”

Pagan looks at him in the dark, head cocked. And then he moves in, this time slowly. A soft, sweet press of his lips, the tip of his tongue barely touching his bottom lip. Gently running along it when he doesn’t pull away, a caress, and Ajay sighs against his mouth. Pagan’s hands come up and cup his face, caressing there too, thumbs brushing along his cheekbones and working into the back of his hair but not gripping or holding him at all. Just cradling. Just loving him.

“Tomorrow,” Ajay whispers to him, “tomorrow we’ll figure out what we’re going to do. What we’re going to do to her.” Pagan’s face goes hard, his eyes glittering in the low light.

“Don’t you worry about a thing, my boy,” Pagan says roughly. “I have favors to call in…of the legal variety, even. We’ll get rid of her. And I know just how to do it.”

 

***


	11. Carving Out a Life

***

 

“Deportation,” Pagan told Ajay the next morning, while they were still in bed. Still with Ajay’s head resting against his, sharing the same pillow. He’d woken feeling like stuffed-up, sandy-jointed _shit,_ but he wasn’t about to let a little thing like a hangover interfere with plotting good old-fashioned revenge.

“Food first,” Ajay had declared muzzily, and Pagan had groaned and dragged himself out of bed in order to go make it for him.

A couple of ibuprofen, a fistful of crackers and a mug of Ajay’s leftover soup later and he’s feeling well enough to scrape himself off the kitchen table and scramble a few eggs for the poor boy. The man who took such good care of him in the middle of his little episode of rankest stupidity, which he absolutely didn’t deserve.

The man who loves him. The man whom he loves in turn.

That feels good, Pagan decides, plying the spatula. It feels good, to be someone’s man again after so long.

He can hear the gentle thump of Ajay on the stairs before he walks in, wearing a t-shirt that he’s fairly certain is his own. The boxer-briefs he’s absolutely sure are his. He smiles, as Ajay comes up behind him and pushes his own t-shirt up to touch his back, kisses his neck to say hello. Moves around him and gets bread out of the wrapper for toast.

After he’s had a few bites, Pagan sits across from him and pours them both juice and snags a piece of toast off his plate.

“Feeling better? Blood sugar back in balance? Good! Now, what we’re going to do, short of me blowing her _fucking_ head off, is to get her deported back to Hong Kong. This will actually be fairly straightforward.” He takes a bite, chews and swallows. The nausea is receding, thankfully. “She has outstanding warrants, and I have acquaintances in the law profession. Ones that owe me a favor or two.”

“Just…no blowing your sister’s head off, okay? No shootings or stabbings, please.”

“Of course, of course…you’re such a wise young man. Think of the mess, the chaos! The cleaning bills! Not to mention the disgruntled neighbors. They do tend to get _so_ upset at a little self-administered justice.” He drops the flippant tone and stares soberly at Ajay. “After I’m done with her it will be as if she’s dead, for our purposes. She won’t be able to set foot in the States again.”

Pagan fetches his laptop and sets it up on the kitchen table, pours himself another glass of fortifying juice, and gets to work.

It only takes him four tries to guess her username and password for the government immigration site, and he rolls his eyes. Once he’s in, he scrolls through the page and stops, eyes wide. Surely not. Even she can’t be this stupid. He rubs his hands together in glee, even though it sets the injured one to throbbing. This is going to be easier than he thought.

“Do you know, Ajay, she’s always declaring that I’m weak and foolish, but do you know what this weak fool does? Hmm? He bothers to renew his fucking green card, is what he does!” He laughs, loud and with an edge of cruelty. “Oh yes, it’s true! God, what a fucking imbecile.”

Ajay sits up straighter in his chair. “Holy shit, you’re kidding.”

“I am not! Wait until Gary gets a load of this!”

“Gary?”

“An old, old friend of mine. The lawyer I mentioned.” Pagan pulls out his phone and puts it on speaker. He has to go through a few underlings, but he’s eventually patched through.

“Pagan! It’s been too many years! How are you, how’s the teaching going, all that small talk stuff?”

Pagan grins ferally. “Oh fine, fine. About the same as always.” He doesn’t mention Ajay, suddenly deciding to leave him out of it as much as possible; both their relationship and what Yuma did in regard to him. He’s been through enough. “Well, there _is_ one not-so-small matter I need your help with.”

“Uh oh…I know that tone,” Gary says cheerfully. What did you do this time? Is it drug charges? Because you know that I don’t really do…” Pagan cuts him off.

“Oh no, nothing of that nature,” he says fondly. “Silly Gary, I’m not in any trouble at all!” His voice drops low and hard. “It’s Yuma.”

Silence, for several beats. “Yuma’s in trouble?” Gary says, carefully neutral this time. “Pagan, I know you don’t want to hear this, but she is trouble, always has been, and I’ve tried…”

Pagan waves a hand. “No, no…you misunderstand me. She’s not currently in trouble…but she should be. She _needs_ to be. And I have everything you need to make that happen.”

Another few beats of silence. “I’m not entirely sure that I’m following you. What exactly is it that you want?”

“Gary, what I _want_ is her head on a platter, hmm yes, on a platter and served up…”

“Pagan, Pagan, how many times do I have to tell you,” Gary chides him, but his tone is fond as well, “no discussing murder in front of your attorney.”

“Sorry!” Pagan laughs. “Well, in any case, if not…that, I need her gone.” Gary’s known him long enough to be able to hear the rage, the vulnerability behind the laughter. “I need her out of my life and over on the other side of the globe. Deportation, extradition back to Hong Kong, however you want to set it up, I don’t care. But gone for good.”

“All right.” The sound of a pen being clicked, the rustle of papers. “Give me the particulars.”

And as he does, he watches Ajay’s eyes grow wider and wider, a nervous rolling in his own stomach.

“So you were cleared of all those charges but she wasn’t, correct?”

“That’s right.” He gazes at Ajay and pleads with him in his mind to…he doesn’t even know what. Not run from him and the old blood on his hands.

“Well, the green card issue would have been more than enough, but this other stuff…Immigration and Customs Enforcement is going to have a field day. This is Interpol level shit, Pagan.”

“Oh yes, I’m well aware. So, easy enough? I know it’s a big favor to ask, but…”

“Nonsense, I’ll never forget how you helped me.” Gary’s pen scratches over the line. “I tell you what. I actually have a contact in ICE, and as soon as we’re off the phone I’ll get ahold of her. We can probably get this underway by tomorrow. Sound good? I can swing by your place and drop off the documents, but she’ll get a summons of course, no need to interact further if you don’t want.”

“No, I…I think there are things that I need to say. Things I need to ask.” _No,_ Ajay mouths from across the table with fear and anger warring on his handsome face. He holds up a finger to forestall the argument that he knows is coming.

Gary clears his throat. “Well. In any case, I can drop by between three and four…would that work for you?”

“Gary, that’s perfect. You’re a fucking miracle worker, you know that?”

“Hardly. Like you said, the case makes itself. Open and shut. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

Pagan hangs up the phone and waits patiently for the inevitable shouting. When it doesn’t come, he looks up.

Ajay’s sitting there with tears welling in his eyes and rage on his face and the combination of the two makes him want to go hide in the shed out back and beg Ishwari’s forgiveness for being the cause of it. He drops his eyes again, unable to bear it.

Pagan wants to hold him and kiss him softly. He wants to tell him he loves him. More than anything, he loves him. But he waits, staring at his own large, capable hands.

Now Ajay knows exactly what his hands are capable of.

Perhaps he won’t want those hands to touch him anymore, the knowledge of what he’s done too difficult to overcome. He’s still hungover and in pain and it’s too much, it’s all too much coming at him from every angle and his hands go a little wavery in his vision as his own eyes try to fill…

…Ajay’s hands slide into his, so careful with the injured one.

Pagan looks up into his face.

“Don’t go,” Ajay growls. “Don’t go there, she knows you’ll retaliate, she’ll be waiting there for you, and…and…” He gulps air. “I’m not like you, I don’t have the skills that you both have…”

“For what?” he says harshly, “to be a murderer?”

And Ajay explodes.

“No! To protect you, you _asshole,_ to go in there and get you out again!” Ajay grips his shoulder and shakes him, just shy of pain. “I can’t lose you, _do you fucking hear me?!”_

Now comes the shouting, just…not how he thought it would be. But he hears. He hears what Ajay doesn’t say. And the anger isn’t for him, not really.

“Come here,” he whispers, and tugs gently at his hands…and Ajay folds himself into his arms. He sinks down to the kitchen floor with him, ignores the cold tile and gets a leg slung over his lap and the other curled around his back and holds him, hot face tucked against his neck. Ajay doesn’t sob, doesn’t make a sound, but he can feel the wetness against his skin. “Sometimes, they just…ambush you, sometimes when you’re not even expecting it…let them out. Don’t fight it, Ajay. These last few days have been hell.” He runs a hand through his perpetually messy hair. “But even if they weren’t, there’s no shame in it, you know. It’s only me here. Only me, who loves you more than anything.” A little hitched sob against his neck at that. He takes his own advice for once, tucks his head down, and lets go, lets the tears drip off his chin and into Ajay’s lap.

“I love you, too,” Ajay murmurs against his skin, voice thick.

“But do you trust me?” His own sounds rough as sandpaper. And isn’t that the million-dollar question? Harder than loving someone, perhaps, as he rubs soothing circles into Ajay’s back.

“Yeah…I do. I do trust you.” He sniffs. “But it just seems…”

“Unnecessarily cavalier?”

“Something like that.”

“I can tell you…she will _not_ expect this coming. In her mind, this was no more than a lark, a nasty little joke to make me angry. In her mind, even if she…touched you, did things to you, she did nothing but play with you and let you go unharmed. That’s how she sees the world, and my reaction will seem all out of proportion.” His fists clench and he disregards the pain of it. “But she did hurt you…she hurt you very badly, took gross and blatant advantage of her position…” He forces out a shaky laugh, trembling all over. “My dearest, are you _sure_ I can’t go over there and just cut her head off?”

Ajay shakes his head, a little rocking motion against his neck. “God, no…”

They sit there in silence for a while, just holding, but it isn’t tense. He shuts his eyes and tries to ignore the fact that his head hurts atrociously and, while he’d sit here on the cold floor all damn day if Ajay needed him to, his hip is already starting to ache along with everything else.

“Ajay, I propose a do-over. Let’s go back upstairs and…pretend we haven’t started the day yet, hmmm?” He rubs a thumb gently down his nose, across the sweet fullness of his bottom lip. “You’ll come back to bed with me, won’t you?”

“Yeah, I just…” He lifts his head and gazes out the window that faces onto the back garden, at the gently falling snow. “I think I want to go talk to Mom for a little bit.” His soft, whiskery cheek rubs against his.

Something about that sentence and the soft tone of his voice makes his chest ache a little, and he holds him closer for a moment before starting the process of untangling them. He doesn’t know what to say, besides, “Of course. I’ll be upstairs.”

 

Even that little distance between them feels like a bit too much, as he dials the secretary’s office and calls in sick. Paul can handle things for a day or two; he’s only running review sessions. He pulls the blinds against the white light from outside, strips down and climbs in the big bed and curls up in the middle of it. Done with thinking.

The wheels have been set in motion; all that’s left to do is rest. Recuperate. His hand throbs in time with his elbow and both beat a counterpoint to the throbbing in his head, but none of it is bad enough to keep him from sleeping. His eyelids are so heavy, but he catches himself straining his ears for the sound of the back door.

He’s gone a long time, as Pagan drifts in and out.

The door quietly opens and shuts without rousing him, but the slight rustle of him taking off his clothes wakes him enough to lift the covers for him, inviting him in. Ajay slides gratefully into the warm pocket he’s made in the bedclothes with a shuddering sigh when the heat from Pagan’s body washes over him. Little droplets of snowmelt glitter in his dark hair. Pagan hisses at the initial contact of icy skin against his but that doesn’t matter, as he wraps him up in his arms, all that matters is that he’s here, he’s here now. Ajay lays his cold hands against his head, cradling it, and it feels so good that he moans and Ajay catches it with his own mouth, cool lips against his.

Ajay’s good smell, his velvety skin under his hands.

Safe. His heart beats with slow contentment against Ajay's chest.

 

The next day, Gary shows up promptly at 3:30.

“Pagan!”

He sets his briefcase down and pulls Pagan into a back-slapping hug, a small, dark-skinned man with a big white grin. They both tower over him.

“Gary, it’s been entirely too damn long. I was half-afraid you’d have to call and postpone!”

“It’s been a few years, hasn’t it?” Gary admits. “As for the other thing…friends in low places and all that, eh? I told you the authorities would be all over it. It was no problem at all.” His gaze falls on Ajay. “And who is this young fellow?”

“This is Ajay Ghale. He’s…” And his mind completely draws a blank. Not boyfriend, it sounds so ridiculous in his head. Partner? Significant other? “Mine,” he settles for. “He’s mine.” He still winces internally at how possessive that sounds.

Gary’s eyes widen. “Ajay…Ajay _Ghale?_ Oh.” His face becomes expressionless, his voice reserved. “I see.”

Ajay’s eyes narrow. “What’s that supposed to mean,” he blurts. When Gary doesn’t respond, Ajay says hotly, “Yeah, we’re together…so? What’s it to you?”

Gary holds up his hands. “I meant no offense. I really didn’t. I was just surprised, since there’s…hmm…history there, I guess is how you might say it? Anyway, congratulations.” He stoops and opens the briefcase at his feet. “Here’re those papers, Pagan. All the details are in there.”

“Again, excellent work. Thank you _so_ much!”

Gary laughs. “Anytime, anytime. Sorry to have to take off so soon, but I really have to get back to the office…call me soon, yeah? Don’t be a stranger. I found this little Korean place that you’d love. We’ll have to go sometime.”

“Of course, Gary.”

After he’s gone, Pagan looks at Ajay, a sidelong glance.

“Sorry I snapped at your friend,” he mutters. “I just…” he looks at the ceiling and sighs. “I’m just really ready for this shit to be over, you know?”

That guilt pricks at him again, as it does every time he thinks of anything to do with Yuma. There’s…hurt in him now, perhaps trauma, in Ajay that wouldn’t be there if he hadn’t…

“Stop. I can see it on your face. Did you drug me and…kidnap me, or whatever? Were you the one who did it? No. Did you tell her to? No.” Ajay rubs at his face. “I wish you’d quit blaming yourself for when somebody _else_ does bad shit to your loved ones.” He reaches out to squeeze Pagan’s hand. “Everything’s okay. I’m maybe not all the way okay, but I will be. I’ll be a lot better after today. We’re okay.”

“We’re okay.”

 

Wanting to have it over with as soon as possible, Pagan goes upstairs to get dressed. He picks out the pink brocade jacket to wear, not in the least because the cut allows easy access to the knife that he tucks into the back of his belt.

“Just…a precaution,” he reassures Ajay. “Nothing more. I promised no stabbing, didn’t I? And I am a man of my word…well.” He clears his throat. “To you, anyway.”

Ajay doesn’t laugh like he thought he would. “If she comes at you, all bets are off, okay? Do what you gotta do.”

“I promise that too,” he whispers, touching his forehead to his.

 

Ajay perches himself on the sink and watches as he shaves and puts on his makeup with especial care.

“It’s armor, isn’t it?” he says suddenly, with the air of someone who’s been turning something over in his mind for awhile. “It’s armor and a dare at the same time…daring people to fuck with you.”

“I suppose it is, in a way,” he says, picking up the eye pencil. He doesn’t bother to suppress his own quick and savage grin. “Oh Ajay, you wouldn’t _believe_ the number of people who will underestimate a man wearing mascara. It’s ludicrous, it really is!” He applies a final, measured sweep. “There! All to my advantage.”

 

Ajay insists on accompanying him and no amount of persuasion can convince him otherwise.

“I’ll wait in the car, but there’s no way in _hell_ I’m going to let you go by yourself. Fuck that.” And Ajay accuses _him_ of being stubborn.

The drive over to Yuma’s is mercifully short, the car full of tense silence. He parks across the street, and Ajay can’t even look at the place, staring at his hands in his lap.

Pagan presses the keys into his hand and he looks up. “Do you want to leave and come back?” He makes his voice as gentle as he can, runs his fingers through the back of his hair.

“No.” Flat and hard. “Just…hurry, okay?” Ajay turns in the seat to face him head on, and his eyes _blaze._ “More than ten minutes and I’m coming in there after you, you hear me? So you better not stop to chit-chat.” With that he turns and stares out the windshield, jaw clenched.

Pagan hugs him as best he can with one arm.  “I really, really don’t fucking deserve you, lovely Ajay. No more than ten minutes. I promise you that as well.”

 

_4:48 pm – Yuma, we need to talk_

 

_4:49 pm – When?_

 

 _4:49 pm – How about right fucking now?_  
_I think that would be a fine time._  
_I’m at the front door_

 

Yuma’s face is a bit startled when she opens the door, even more so when he shoves his way past her, but she recovers quickly. “By all means, come in,” she says sarcastically.

“Oh don’t worry…I won’t be staying long. I’ll even get right to business. Did you molest the boy, or did you just roofie him and kidnap him for shits and giggles?”

“You are so fucking soft-headed…of course I didn’t _actually_ do anything to him. Like I said, not my type, even though he was writhing around like an animal in heat. I gave him the good drugs to teach you _both_ a fucking lesson.”

“Oh, well, that’s good news!  That means we won’t have to add _rape_ to your charges, just gross negligence.” He jerks the folded papers from his jacket pocket and presents them with a flourish. “Deportation hearing, three days from now. Expedited on account of those pesky old warrants you still have. Oh yes, your big brother remembers! Better be ready to explain that little incident in Mongkok all those years ago!” He shrugs. “Or not, I doubt it’ll make much difference one way or the other, whatever you say.”

Yuma has been steadily growing paler. “That was decades ago…I was still a kid…”

He waves a hand irritably. “Oh Yuma dear, we’re talking arrest warrants in connection with _murder,_ not unpaid parking tickets. These sorts of things just don’t go away. Well, mine did, because I ratted out every single one of those bastards to Interpol. Sang like a goddamned canary! Perhaps you should of thought of that. Or of actually bothering to renew your green card.” Her color is so bad, a sickly gray, that he feels a tiny bit sorry for her. “Were any of us really still kids, who went through that? Who lived that life?” he says quietly.

And as usual, when she senses softer emotions, Yuma lashes out. “You can take your fucking _pity_ and shove it up your _cau hai_ sideways, you weak and pathetic shell of a man. It’s no wonder Father hated you, always spreading your legs for whatever Ghale happens along like a fucking _dog_ …”

Her court papers are still in his hand. He flings them right into her face and has her pinned by the throat and squeezing before conscious thought kicks in, and he has to _force_ himself to back that pressure off of her windpipe. “That Ghale, the one you have such contempt for…he saved your life.” he says, soft and venomous, as she coughs a little, her eyes watering. “Oh, but you didn’t know that, did you, _mei mei._ I was all for just disemboweling you, flaying you alive and leaving you pinned to your own dining room table, but he convinced me otherwise.”

“You wouldn’t dare, you don’t have the guts for…”

The knife is in his free hand in one blurred fast motion, in his hand and pressing sharply into her belly button.

 _“DON’T TEMPT ME!!”_ He roars it, vision washing red, everything slamming into him at once: the stress, the memories of that sleepless, anxious night when he was sure something was terribly wrong, that ice in his chest when he saw those pictures, followed by burning pain, Ajay’s fearful distress, afraid he’d been raped and afraid to tell him and his tears hot on Pagan’s shoulder.

She finally, _finally_ understands how close to the brink of his madness she is. Just how close she’s pushed him to his breaking point. She recoils from him with true, sensible fear in her face.

He’s backing up too, before he loses all self-control, before he does something he truly will regret. He resheathes the knife with a practiced reversal, tucking it into the back of his belt.

 

They stare at each other, chests heaving.

 

“I had forgotten somehow, what your name means. Who that man was…the king who killed his own family, when they stood in the way of what he wanted. Forgive me,” she says, and he can’t detect any mockery in it. He suddenly feels so tired, like his knees don’t quite want to hold him up anymore. Violence is all she really understands, will ever understand. The fist, the knife, her boot on someone’s throat. Someone else’s boot on her own. He gestures at the papers on the floor.

“Do with those what you will,” he says heavily, “try to run, if it pleases you; I won’t tell a soul where you might be, when the authorities come asking. Or go back to Kowloon and try to carve out a life there. Because I don’t think you’re particularly suited to the one you have here, just as that life never, ever suited me.”

“Tell me this, Pagan…are you really, truly happy here? Answer me honestly.”

And he does. “I wasn’t for many years, but I am now.”

“And do you think that he’ll leave you, like his wh…like his mother did?”

He thinks that over too, his head cocked a little. “No…no, I really don’t think that he will.” As honest as he knows how to be. The truth in it suffuses warm through his middle, and he suddenly wants nothing more than to have Ajay’s arms around him, his own around Ajay’s broad and steady shoulders.

She turns away at that, as if he had slapped her. Her jaw clenched tightly.

“Goodbye, Yuma. I hope…I do hope that you can find a kind of happiness, someday.” He takes her in, her pinched face, the tiny rivulet of blood staining the front of her shirt from where he pricked her with the knife.

When it becomes obvious that she has nothing more to say, he strides past her to the door, opens it…and stops, gazing at her rigid back. Wishing that…no.

No.

He walks out, gently pulling the door shut behind him.

 

***

 

Ajay watches Pagan shut the door to his sister’s house, jog down the porch steps and back to the car without much expression at all on his face. He opens the door and slides into the driver’s seat.

When he turns and looks at Ajay, his face is still blank but his eyes, the lost, helpless expression in his eyes has him reaching for Pagan just as Pagan is reaching for him, his fist tangled in Pagan’s collar and dragging him in, Pagan’s hands rucking up his shirt and jacket to touch bare skin as their mouths collide in something more elemental than a mere kiss, breathing each other in, clinging to each other.

“It’s done,” Pagan murmurs, when they have to break apart a little for air, “it’s done. She won’t trouble us anymore.”

“I…” he’s not entirely sure what to think. The day before, Pagan was ready to actually kill her, but now he’s upset that she’s getting deported? He settles for, “I’m sorry you’re sad and shit’s complicated.”

Pagan’s fingers flutter over the downy skin at the small of his back. “I’m just…sad is perhaps not the most accurate word. Perhaps some class of pity, is what I feel. I could never be what she needed me to be, who she needed…and this? This she can’t understand at all.” He pulls Ajay back in for another one of those shattering, elemental kisses, seeking connection.

He wants to take him to bed and stay there for _days_. But when he states this desire, Pagan shivers against him in want but pulls away, back into the driver’s seat.

“Oh no no no, my dearest boy…as utterly delightful as that would be, you must _study_ instead. Have you really forgotten the date?”

Shit. How in the hell did he forget about fucking _finals?_ A cold wash of anxiety floods his stomach. “Oh god. You’re right. Stop by my place so I can get my stuff and I can study at your house?” He can see Pagan considering it, sees him waver, sees him break.

“Well, all right…but I also have work to do, so no attempts to distract me. I still have to make the final for your fucking awful class, and no peeking, by the way! And I _still_ have to finish grading those sad, pitiful excuses for essays…” Pagan keeps muttering to himself as he starts the car and puts it in gear, and Ajay smiles. He has his hand resting on the gearshift like usual, and Ajay reaches and slots his own fingers in between his.

 

When they reach Ajay’s apartment building, he leans over and kisses Pagan’s temple. “Less than five minutes, promise,” he says, and Pagan just pats his elbow and waves him on. He already has his phone out and some game loading; he’ll be good for awhile. He still takes the stairs two at a time, just out of habit.

It doesn’t take him long at all to grab his schoolbag and a few days’ worth of clothes. As he’s out on the porch and pulling the door shut and locking it, his landlady Ms. Sharma leans over the railing on the floor above. Sharma is her first name and she insists on him using it but his mom beat respect into his head, and so they reached a compromise.

“Oh Ajay, I haven’t seen you in ages! Staying busy with school?” He curlers wobble as she bends over the rail like that and he has to suppress the urge to laugh.

“Yeah, pretty busy with school, ma’am. I’m working there a few hours a week now too,” he says.

“Hang on and I’ll be right down,” and the wobbling curlers disappear.

Ajay glances down into Pagan’s car and can see the light from his phone illuminating his face. Not bored yet, good.

Ms. Sharma comes around the corner from the stairwell and parks herself more or less directly in his way, an apparition in a slinky red silk robe and night cream.

“Is everything okay? I mean, I didn’t forget about maintenance stuff or anything, right?” he asks in some trepidation. He _has_ been pretty busy and gone a lot.

“Oh no, Ajay, nothing like that! I was just checking on you like a nosy old lady, you know. Just wanted to make sure everything’s all right with you.”

“You’re hardly old,” he says, and it’s true.

Sharma gives him the side eye, dark and sparkling. “Flattery will get you everywhere, sweetie.”

She leans out a bit and looks down. “Oh, he’s back again, huh? I heard his car one night and looked out and saw you kissing him,” she says, as nonchalantly as if they were discussing the weather. Ajay coughs and blushes. He can feel the red creeping up his face. “He’s a decent-looking man, even if he’s maybe a bit old for you…is he a musician or something?” she says, with a sharp air of appraisal. He doesn’t even know what to say to that. Does she mean his makeup? When he remains silent, she continues on brightly. “Well, in any case, is he good to you? Treats you well?”

“Yes ma’am, he does. He’s actually a professor at the university, believe it or not. But that part’s a secret, okay? We’re not supposed to be seeing each other, so don’t tell anybody.” He drops a little wink. It wouldn’t matter if she told the entire building, but Ajay knows that she lives and breathes for gossip. She’s good friends with the little Italian ladies that live on his floor, and their next bridge night will be rife with speculation regarding his love life.

She winks back at him. “Of course, of course. That’s good to hear. I worry about you, is all, being all alone in the world. But I’m glad to see that you’re not. And your little secret is safe with me.” She steps aside to let him through, still gazing down at Pagan. “I’ve kept you too long. But I want to give you some advice.” She prods at his shoulder with a bony finger. “Make him take things seriously, take _you_ seriously. You’re too handsome and too nice of a young man to put up with bullshit, you hear? Don’t let him play games with your heart.”

Ajay rubs at his shoulder. She has some seriously forceful talons. “Oh no, it’s not like that at all. He…he’s pretty serious about it. I think he was worried that I was going to be the one playing games with him, or something.” Possibly the understatement of the year. “But we worked it out.”

“That’s good. But just you keep that in mind. Too nice, too handsome to get shit on.” She pats his arm. I’ll let you get back to your man.”

“Yeah, thanks,” Ajay says a little distractedly, still gazing down. Something about that phrase resonates in his chest and spreads warmly through him. Pagan, finally feeling their eyes on him, looks up sharply…and then relaxes and smiles when he spots Ajay, that warm smile that’s his alone.

His insides flutter happily to see it. “I guess he is my man, isn’t he?”

 

Much later that evening, after hours and hours of work and a dinner of Chinese takeout and Pagan’s incomprehensible laughter over the crab rangoon, they finally crawl upstairs to bed.

Stripped down and skin to skin, they fit together like they were made to. Pagan stretches and sighs in contentment from where he’s spooned up behind him, his arm warm and solid over him. He’s already on the edge of sleep; Ajay can hear it in his breathing.

“Bed’s not s’big anymore. Not too big at all,” Pagan mumbles against his hair, and then there’s just the tiny, soft huffs of his sleeping breaths, the air in the vents, the soft sound the refrigerator makes downstairs.

 

Ajay closes his eyes and lets himself drift off too.

 

***


	12. Epilogue

***

 

Winter descends with full force on their sleepy little college town, as Ajay parks it at Pagan’s kitchen table for a sweating week of cramming for his finals. Pagan acts as support crew, bringing him caffeine and sandwiches and bodily hauling him off to bed from time to time, and pushing him into the shower as necessary. He sags in relief after he’s taken them; done, for better or for worse. He _thinks_ he did okay, even on the one for Dr. Lau that’s proctored by someone else in her department. Then it’s his turn to run support for Pagan as he grades stack after stack of exams for his own classes, racing to meet the Monday morning deadline to have final grades in.

He lets Ajay sneak a peek at his own test.

“A B! No fuckin’ way!”

Pagan remains impassive. “You missed questions eighteen and twenty-seven, and that put you in high B range. And _no,_ I’m absolutely not bumping you two points, don’t even ask.” He reaches out and pulls him close: he could use a shower too, rumpled and sweaty, but Ajay doesn’t mind. “But you made an A overall,” he whispers. “It’s our little secret.”

“What about Rabi? Did you murder his grade?”

Pagan gives him a thunderous look. “You know better than to even ask, but no, I didn’t _murder_ the boy’s grade, as you so gracelessly put it. I awarded him exactly what he deserved.”

What he deserved turned out to be a low B, when he texts Rabi a few days later to find out.

Just when he thinks they can finally collapse, Pagan has to go get cleaned up and haul his academic regalia out of the back of his closet so that he can attend winter graduation, mandatory for professors. Ajay has never seen doctoral regalia before, so Pagan lays it all out on the bed so he can examine it; the long, heavy velvet robe with a bright silk cape thing in the school colors that Pagan calls a hood, a dark red and gold sash for the Poli Sci department and a black poofy velvet hat with a red and gold tassel. It should look ridiculous; it certainly looks dumb when it’s laid out but once Pagan gets it all on, along with the medals and cords and things that he’s earned, he looks _awesome._ He looks like a fucking mage or something. “Bloody hot and heavy, and a bitch to try to drive in,” Pagan says, but he still preens a little under Ajay’s praise.

 

And then, an entire, glorious month of winter break. After finals he just…stays, and Pagan doesn’t ask him to leave. The opposite in fact; he doesn’t seem to much care for having him out of his sight after the Dr. Lau debacle, which he’s absolutely fine with. They nest, they cocoon, they do nothing but lay around and get tipsy on hot cocoa spiked with schnapps and watch corny old movies and fuck each other for hours, slow and warm.

It turns out that Pagan doesn’t own a tree or any Christmas trappings at all, but that doesn’t matter. Sometimes they turn the tv to a channel that makes it look like a fireplace, and one night Pagan pulls him up off the couch and into his arms. Ajay smiles.

“What are we doing?”

Pagan snorts. “Dancing, of course!” Like he’s being obtuse or something, even though there’s a distinct lack of context clues. He guesses the music’s probably in Pagan’s head.

“I don’t know how to dance though,” which is true, but being held and shuffling in place a little to the sound of crackling flames and a song that only Pagan can hear is still nice.

“Oh, that doesn’t matter in the slightest darling, I don’t either,” as he hums a little tune and holds him close in the warm dark.

 

Ajay wakes early on Christmas morning, excited for no real reason he can discern. It’s just another day, after all. He stretches extravagantly, toes burrowing all the way to the cool spots at the corners of the big bed. Pagan is generally up with the sun, but this morning he’s still burrowed up and shows no sign of stirring. “Mmmm,” he grunts sleepily from somewhere in the blankets at Ajay’s whispered good morning, which gives him a clue as to where to unwrap him enough to kiss his hair. He sneaks downstairs, avoiding the second-to-last step that always squeaks, intending to get the coffee started when he spots the pile of wrapped boxes on the couch.

As was his intention, the smell of brewing coffee soon pulls Pagan out of bed and down the stairs, mussed and still in his robe and yawning. Ajay stares at the pile as the coffee machine sputters behind him in the kitchen.

“I thought we agreed on no presents,” Ajay says, trying to keep the dismay out of his voice as Pagan looks a little guilty. He doesn’t even know where they came from; what with the snow they haven’t gone anywhere in ages.

“Well, you may not thank me, once you see what they are,” Pagan says heavily, still rough with sleep. “I don’t know. They may not be things that you even want, and I hope that they won’t…cause you pain…but I thought you should have them all the same.” He rubs at his face with the air of someone who, having made a decision, is already regretting it. On the heels of that cryptic pronouncement, Ajay examines the boxes more closely. They’re all wrapped a little clumsily in the same plain brown paper. He must’ve snuck downstairs when he was asleep to do it. Must’ve spent ages on it.

“Perhaps start with…these,” Pagan says quietly, picking out four boxes and stacking them neatly, “and I’ll go get started on breakfast.” He’s out of the room before Ajay can stop him, not that he would try. He’s been with Pagan long enough now that he recognizes when he needs to escape.

He runs his fingers over the paper and loosens the tape, rather than rip it off, not wanting to ruin Pagan’s careful handiwork. Stupid, but he still can’t bring himself to do it. He slides the box out, which is some kind of fine-grained wood with a brass latch on the front. It’s pretty heavy. He pops the catch and opens the lid…and nearly drops it in shock.

Inside is an immense gold necklace on a velvet cloth, a gold so pure and yellow it looks fake, like brass. But the weight gives it away. It’s crusted with big, raw-cut garnets and turquoises, and Ajay can’t even fathom how much it could be worth.

Utterly confused, he just sits on the carpet gazing at it.

Eventually he closes the lid and lays it aside, since staring at it isn’t giving him any further ideas as to what it is or what he’s supposed to do with it. It looks like something that should be in a fucking museum or something. Maybe one of these other boxes will clue him in.

The next one is a similar, but smaller box that contains bracelets, so many gold and gemmed bracelets. He sits there cross legged on the carpet with the box in his lap and no clue whatsoever.

“Your mother’s wedding jewelry,” Pagan says from the doorway, some of that heaviness from earlier still in his voice. “Afterwards, I packed up all of their things and put them into storage.” He doesn’t even have to put a name to that rift in his life; there’s only what came before and what happened after, a harsh dividing line. “I moved everything here when I bought this house, thinking...well. I suppose you know what I was thinking.” He shifts restlessly against the doorframe he’s leaning against. “But these are things that you should have. Old pictures and your father’s journals, things of that nature…but perhaps I should have thought this out better. It’s our first Christmas. I would very much regret it if I’ve ruined your holiday by dredging up this old shit.” Ajay takes one look at his folded arms, his tight, vaguely unhappy expression and gets up.

“I wish you’d stop second-guessing yourself,” he says, sliding his arms around Pagan’s waist. “This…this is my _past_ you’re giving back to me, something I never got to have. Even if it’s…okay, it might be a little painful,” he acknowledges, “but you’ve given me this thing that’s absolutely unique, and important, something that only you could give me, and…and…shit, I really don’t have words. Besides thank you, and I love you.” Pagan’s still stiff against him, his arms folded…and then he relaxes and melts into him.

“You’re sure it’s all right,” he whispers near Ajay’s ear.

“Yeah…more than all right. But I still feel a little bad, that I didn’t think of something to give you.” He rubs his nose against Pagan’s earring.

“Every day, Ajay,” Pagan murmurs. “Every day, you give me the greatest gift I could ask for.”

After breakfast, they sit together and look through the boxes. Ajay finds the pictures of Ishwari and Mohan on their wedding day. “She really was just a kid, wasn’t she,” he says, a little disturbed, and Pagan nods.

“A very, very different culture. Very different. But she told me she remembered enjoying getting all dressed up and getting to wear makeup and she thought Mohan was a handsome fellow. She’d known him her entire life, so at the very least he wasn’t a stranger.”

More old photos; his grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins. He recognizes his eyes in one person’s face, his nose and mouth on someone else, even the shape of his chin, everyone labelled in Ishwari’s neat script. It’s a shame he can’t read it, but surely there’s someone at school that could help him translate; both the pictures and the heavy, leather-bound journals that were Mohan’s.

Another stack of photos, these much newer. His own baby pictures, which he’s never seen before. Ishwari holding him, holding Lakshmana, in her and Pagan’s little apartment. Him riding on Pagan’s shoulders as a sturdy toddler, Pagan’s face shockingly young. Barely twenty, his hair all dark but worn much the same. Ajay chuckles through a sheen of tears, touching the picture with gentle fingers. “You were almost still a kid yourself.”

Slowly and haltingly, Pagan tells him stories while they look; what his friend Mohan was like back before everything went to hell, funny stories about things they did together, stories about her own family that Ishwari had told him. Ajay leans against his side, one leg thrown over his and as he goes on, his voice gets stronger and more vibrant. They laugh together, sometimes through tears, but they laugh.

They laugh, and they heal. Or at least make a good start on it.

 

All too soon, it’s back to the grindstone for the both of them. That last day, the Sunday before school starts, he keeps putting off going back to his little apartment. There are things he needs to do, things him and Pagan both have to do to get ready, but he can’t seem to get enough of Pagan’s hands on him, drifting across his rib cage under his shirt. His own run greedily across his shoulders, his nape, and when Pagan runs a thumb across his bottom lip he catches it in his teeth and bites down carefully and soothes it with his tongue, just a little, just to feel him shiver.

“I miss you already, and you’ve not even left yet,” Pagan sighs against his throat.

“Yeah, I know what you mean,” he whispers back. He can feel it too, waiting to ambush him once he’s finally alone.

“Won’t you let me drive you home? It’s too cold to be waiting for the bus.”

“I…yeah, I…” It’s almost as if he has to force his hands open, where they’re gripping the fabric of Pagan’s shirt. “I just…don’t want to leave you,” a husky whisper that pops out without his meaning it to; he’s been with him nearly twenty-four seven for a _month_ now, and he needs to give the poor guy some breathing room, some time apart. “Fuck, I’m sorry, I’m being an asshole…you have shit to do, I have shit to do, you need your space…”

Pagan cuts him off. “Responsibilities. _Propriety,_ ” he says bitterly, even as he’s tugging Ajay into his lap. “I’d ask you to just move in, if we could get away with it. I’d like nothing better,” as Ajay relaxes against him. “But you have your things all packed up, yes? Ready to go?” He rubs his face against the front of Ajay’s t-shirt, breathing him in. “Five more minutes,” he mumbles, slightly muffled, his arms holding him tight. “Just…five more minutes, and then we’ll leave,” as Ajay combs his fingers through Pagan’s hair.

Five minutes end up being more like twenty, but it’s all too soon that they arrive at Ajay’s apartment building. Ajay means for their kiss goodnight to be gentle, and it is, but before he quite realizes it he’s teasing at Pagan’s bottom lip with the tip of his tongue. Pagan opens for him eagerly and the wet heat of his mouth draws him in and he moves greedily, hungrily into a kiss growing hotter and more humid by the second. Pagan works a hand into the back of his shaggy hair and tugs, surprising a moan out of him.

“Do you want to come in with me,” he whispers against his already flushed lips, and Pagan’s eyes snap open. He doesn’t say anything, but the beseeching, turned-on, resigned look in them hurts his heart a little.

“I’d like nothing better, my sweet, lovely Ajay. _Nothing_ better,” he repeats emphatically. “But…”

“I know, I’m sorry…you’re right. I didn’t mean…”

“Shhh. It’s fine. More than fine…extremely flattering,” he says with a roguish little grin, as Ajay disentangles them and straightens Pagan’s collar. “I love you, darling boy, so much. Sleep well.”

“I love you too. “G’night,” as he leans in for one more kiss, this one a soft and tender press of lips. A little nuzzle at his cheek, his ear and then he’s grabbing his bag and closing the car door between them quickly, like ripping off a bandaid.

Once Pagan’s car is up the street, he takes the stairs two at a time like always. As he’s unlocking his door, lost in thought, a voice startles him badly enough that he almost drops his keys. “Did you have a good Christmas break, Ajay,” Ms. Sharma says sweetly from the upper balcony.

“Uh, yeah,” as he rubs the back of his head. “Yeah, it was nice.”

“That’s good to hear, sweetie,” is all she says. Eyes twinkling, she throws him a little wink, and of course his ears grow hot. He hurries in and shuts the door before she has a chance to glide down in her slinky red robe and enquire about the particulars.

That night, after he’s gotten his clothes laid out for the morning and his school supplies packed up in his bag, he curls up with the sweater in his own bed that was always fine before, but after a whole month with Pagan seems too small, too hard. The sweater doesn’t really smell like him anymore either, besides maybe the faintest whiff of his cologne at the collar, but he might be just imagining it. It’s been too long. But at least it’s warm and soft, as he lies there and thinks about Pagan holding himself in the dark, arms wrapped tightly around himself. He sighs.

 

The first thing he does the next morning is head to Old Main and do the paperwork to switch majors again; with only Pagan and Dr. Harmon in the Poli Sci department, there’s no way he can fulfil the degree requirements without taking some of Pagan’s classes again. But that’s all right, even though it’s a little bittersweet. He found out last semester that he enjoys sociology almost as well. There’s a lot of overlap, but he’ll miss listening to Pagan’s lectures. Speaking of which…he checks his watch. 8:35. If he hurries…

The door to 146B is shut, of course, but Pagan’s resonant voice comes through loud and clear anyway. Ajay watches him through the narrow window, somehow both tacky and resplendent in that pink jacket. Being in love with him doesn’t make him any less of a madman, Ajay thinks, grinning as he slams through the syllabus, a force of controlled chaos. It’s when he moves on to the roll that he turns his head a little and catches Ajay watching through the window. Maybe just a little startled to see him there but he covers it fast, a warm look in his eyes and the merest quirk of his lips as he goes back to his attendance sheet. Three minutes later the door flies open and he’s out and striding down the hall ahead of this semester’s crop of students. He throws a cheerful and mischievous look back over his shoulder at Ajay and pointedly glances at the ceiling. _Upstairs, my office._

When Ajay gets up there though, there’s no Pagan. The door’s unlocked so he goes ahead and goes in, leaving it ajar behind him. He takes the folded sweater out of his bag and sets it on the desk and gives his poor neglected plants a drink from the pitcher on the sill just as Pagan breezes in with two coffees, thank god. Caffeine. “I’ve got class in like ten minutes, I just wan…” Pagan doesn’t even bother setting their coffee down before he presses himself full-length against him, mouth against his. As soon as Pagan’s lips brush his it’s like an electric spark in his stomach, surprisingly strong as he leans into him with a sigh. “Just wanted to say good morning,” Ajay continues with a laugh when he gets the breath to do so, as Pagan’s eyes crinkle in mirth.

When Friday afternoon finally rolls around they barely make it out of the entryway, shoes and clothes trailing down the hall and through the living room.

 

With Pagan’s help in planning his schedules and a lot of hard work and sleepless nights, he manages to graduate in three years instead of four. They help each other stay strong for productivity’s sake; when Ajay begs, _begs_ him to let him come over and blow him against the kitchen table, Pagan growls at him over the phone. “Absolutely _not._ Have you, perchance, forgotten all about your lit review that’s due on Monday? Hmmm? I love you. Get fucking busy.”

Ajay, of course, occasionally has to do the same. “We’re not fucking until you get those goddamn quizzes graded. You were just telling me that your students have been going, ‘Ooooh, Dr. Min, have you graded our tests yet? Huh? Huh??’ If you want it this _week_ you better get your shit done,” and has to harden his heart to his soft pleas. In this way, they manage to maintain both Ajay’s GPA and halfway decent student evaluations for Pagan.

He doesn’t even take the summers off. He’s even busier then, taking classes that have twelve weeks’ worth of course material crammed into six, hours and hours of sitting in class while birds chirp in the warm breeze and bees drone sleepily in the roses outside the classroom window and he does his best not to nod off.

 

Those years fly by, hectic but good; a blur of exams and projects and classes and weekends with Pagan’s arms around him, eating the good food that Pagan cooks for him. Both of them in the floor of Pagan’s living room, Ajay’s bare feet propped on Pagan’s back as he tries to pound statistical analysis into his head. Pagan, lying on his belly, occasionally breaks the companionable silence with muttered curses as he grades student papers.

The joy of staying with Pagan on breaks, of getting to wake up beside him every morning, curled around each other every night. A blur of the seasons changing, of crisp autumn leaves and snow and new flowers and cold beer in Pagan’s backyard, watching the fireflies in the velvety summer dark, until the spring of his own graduation rolls around.

That year, winter recedes in a timely fashion without late frosts and the resulting outbreak of all things green is _glorious,_ all the trees in town in bloom in a profusion of whites and pinks and wonderful flowery smells. Campus is a riot of colorful flowers of all kinds. Pagan’s backyard is covered in pink petals that float prettily in the breeze and drifts across the new grass, so green it seems to glow.

They’ve both been taking decongestants for weeks.

“That fucking tree,” Pagan grumps at it, hosing golden pollen off the patio. “I swear I’m getting it cut down this year, there’s not a season where it isn’t dropping shit I have to clean up. Look at this, this…tree jizz everywhere! All over everything!” He heaves a melodramatic sigh when his violent gesticulations with the water hose threaten to soak his own shoes. “I understand, I really do, spring has sprung, everything is frisky and all that…but it’s up my _fucking nose_.” Ajay laughs at the idea of tree jizz but pays his threats not one bit of attention; while he threatens it every year he’s also seen how he pats the trunk of it fondly whenever he walks past, and when late summer comes he’ll help Pagan spread clean sheets under it to catch all the cherries that fall. He loves those cherries. They both do. More than worth a little snot now to have the pleasure of eating them warm right off the tree and watching Pagan’s bare shoulders freckle up in the sun.

Afterwards, he helps Pagan plant the tomato and herb seedlings that he’s been so carefully tending under grow lights in the garage. The wind makes it chilly enough to need jackets still but the sun is warm on their shoulders and heads, the soil warm under their hands as they set the tender little plants in their new homes. Pagan rests his head against his and Ajay breathes in the good smells of cherry blossoms and earth and the fresh breeze, the smell of sunshine in his hair as their dirty fingers entwine.

 

“Oh shit,” Pagan blurts, later that evening over dinner. “Ajay, your graduation is _tomorrow._ ”

“Jesus Christ,” he yelps. How in the hell did he forget? No, both of them forget? It’s not like they don’t have to both be there. “Shit shit shit, I don’t have anything to wear…” While he paid his graduation fees and bought his cap and gown ages ago, wearing jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers under it is generally frowned on.

Pagan, calming down, forks up another bite. “Not to worry, my boy, we’ll figure it out. I’m sure I have something that will fit you.”

The next morning he’s up early, digging around in the closet and whistling a little as Ajay pushes the blankets back groggily. “Whatimezit?”

“Not even seven yet. We’ve plenty of time! Go back to sleep for a little while, if you like.”

“No, ‘m up. I think.” He wipes at his eyes. “Good thing I love you cause you are like…entirely too cheerful.”

Pagan throws him a cheeky grin before returning to…whatever it is he’s doing, but it seems to involve a lot of hangers clacking and squeaking on the rod. He lays in bed and listens to the soothing sound of him humming to himself and drifts off again.

Ajay wakes again to bright sunshine streaming through the window and across the clothes laid out across Pagan’s side of the bed: his academic robes, which he affectionately and privately thinks of as Pagan’s Wizard Wear, and a very, very expensive-looking double-breasted black suit, complete with matching waistcoat. The sun glints on the muted gold embroidery on the the vest. Ajay blinks at it. He was thinking something more along the lines of a decent button-down and a pair of khakis.

“Ah, you’re awake! I have shoes for you to try on.” He unrolls a pair of dress socks with a flourish and flips the comforter back and just…tries to jam them on Ajay’s feet.

Ajay tries to wriggle away from him. “Cut it out, I can put them on myse…” He yelps and kicks at Pagan’s unintentionally ticking fingers.

“Oh?” Pagan says, with an evil little smile that Ajay doesn’t like the looks of at all. “Is that how it is? Are we _ticklish,_ perchance?” And promptly dives on the bed and attempts to pin him.

“Fuck you, get off, you’re fuckin’ heavy!” Ajay sputters with laughter, squirming to keep his feet out of range as Pagan tries to pin both his hands with one of his, but they’re way too evenly matched for that. After a brief but intense battle for dominance he gets a knee in between Pagan’s and flips them, and this time it’s his turn to pin his hands over his head. Pagan looks up at him, face flushed and eyes bright, and if his now non-combative squirming is anything to go by he’s decided to throw the game. He arches under him, a long rippling wave as Ajay’s mouth meets his.

The socks and the shoes and the rest of it are quickly forgotten, although they thankfully remember not to roll on their good clothes.

After some time, both of them drowsy and sated, Pagan runs his hand along his arm and turns his wrist to glance at his watch and sighs.

“Back to it, my boy,” he says and makes to get up, but Ajay sleepily wraps his arms around his waist.

“Nap first,” he mumbles into Pagan’s side.

“Can it really be called a nap, if you’ve yet to get out of bed? I…” Ajay slides his hands up and down his chest and belly, petting him. Another soft sigh. “Oh, all right. Since you insist.”

That extra nap meant rushing showers, but it was worth it. Pagan’s bespoke suit turns out to fit amazingly well, especially after a couple of judiciously placed safety pins, but Ajay still feels like some kind of impostor in it as he examines his reflection in the bathroom mirror. “This is…I love it, but it’s way too nice for me. I look like a homeless guy pretending to be an investment banker or something.” Maybe a little bit of an exaggeration, but not by much.

“Nonsense,” Pagan says, examining Ajay’s borrowed shoes critically and giving them a last little shine with the edge of his undershirt. “You look fucking _fantastic._ Absolutely, sinfully edible,” as Ajay rolls his eyes.

He rakes a hand through his perennially shaggy hair. “I probably should have gotten it cut.”

“I rather like your just rolled out of bed look,” Pagan says sweetly in his ear, as he reaches over Ajay’s shoulders to tie his tie in the mirror, pale gold to match the embroidery on the waistcoat. “But I also see what you mean. Hold still,” and gets a dollop of whatever it is that he uses on his own hair and carefully spreads a little of it through Ajay’s with his fingers. “There! Now it looks…more intentional, perhaps?”

“That’s a little better,” Ajay agrees. “Thanks.”

Pagan kisses his ear and pulls back to examine his face better. “Are you nervous? Have you ever been to one of these things?” Ajay shakes his head. “Well, it will be horribly hot and crowded and will take _forever._ But you only have to go through it once. Or twice, if you decide to go on.” Pagan’s forehead furrows. “Or perhaps even three times, if you’re like me and keep going back because you can’t decide what you want to do with your life. But no more than three!” As Ajay laughs.

 Later, when they’re suited up and robed and getting into the car, Pagan scowls at the fresh dusting of pollen across the hood of the Volvo. “Tree jizz,” he mutters darkly, and Ajay has to stifle a snort. They get in and Pagan promptly turns the air conditioning to full-blast and it’s Ajay’s turn to frown, although his is more perplexed. It’s not anywhere approaching warm out…on the contrary, it’s a misty, chilly kind of spring day. “Oh trust me, you’ll thank me later,” he says, even as he shivers a little. Ajay buries his freezing fingers into the warm confines of Pagan’s velvet robes, the stack of their weird academic hats held safely on his lap for the trip.

 

Pagan was right, the drive downtown to the big sports arena is a crowded nightmare, nicely dressed families and people in robes everywhere. “I’ll drop you off at the front and go find somewhere to park,” Pagan says, eyes scanning the nearby lots optimistically. “They’ll have a sort of rehearsal beforehand, tell you where to sit and walk and when to stand, all of that,” and then has to stomp on the brakes when someone’s little kid toddles out in front of the car. He slams his finger down on the window button and bellows at the kid’s mom in Cantonese, and while the woman doesn’t appear to be Asian, no translation is really required. Especially when he switches languages with “AND PUT A GODDAMN LEASH ON YOUR BLOODY _FUCKING_ BABY IF YOU CAN’T KEEP HOLD OF HER ANY BETTER THAN THAT,” finishing it all off with an outstretched middle finger as they go by. “It feels as if there’s one every year,” he says with a sigh, seemingly perfectly calm again. Ajay’s long since gotten accustomed to his whiplash moods. “What was I saying? Oh yes! I’ll drop you off and see you inside presently.”

“Wish I could walk in with you,” he says, turning his mortarboard in his hands. “I’m getting a little sick of hiding us.”

Pagan stiffens a little beside him. “You know it’s not…”

“That you’re ashamed of me or something?” He puts his hat down and touches Pagan’s cold hand. “I know, Pagan, I know you’re not…it’s just that it’s been years now, that we’ve been together. Years of not…fuck, sometimes not even being able to look at you in public, you know?” He stares down at their entwined fingers. “I don’t know why it’s bothering me so much all of a sudden.”

“Oh Ajay, dearest boy…I just didn’t want you to be late for your own graduation.” He squeezes Ajay’s fingers. “But we’ll go in together, if that’s what you’d like. This is your day. I put a tortu…I mean, a tie on and everything! Just for you! A measure of my love,” he says dramatically, trying to get him to laugh. And of course it works, but he’s also right; he may be a sharp dresser, but he _loathes_ ties, always complains about how they make him feel as if he’s being slowly and delicately strangled.  It’s a sweet gesture, since Ajay only half-jokingly mentioned once that he looked smoking hot in them.

With both of them on the lookout, they manage to find a parking place less than a block away. After they pull their hats on and Pagan locks the car, Ajay reaches for him, although it takes him a second to actually find his hand inside the wide sleeve of his robe. It’s the first time he’s ever held his hand in public. As of last week, he’s officially not a student anymore, so fuck it. Pagan smiles that gentle smile and lifts their entwined hands to kiss the backs of his fingers gallantly, and damn if it doesn’t make him blush a little.

The foyer of the arena is packed with people taking pictures of their loved ones and mingling, the crowd noise a dull roar. It’s already a little overwhelming, and just as Pagan promised, warm. It feels good now against his chilled face, but he can tell that it won’t later.

Being surrounded by all these families kind of makes him want to throw his arms around Pagan right here right now, the only family he needs. But Pagan drops his hand in order to straighten his mortarboard with careful fingers. “You have your tassel, right? Only a few minutes until you have to report to…where ever they want you to go.”

“Yeah.” He pulls the tassel out of his pocket, still safe in its plastic bag, along with the card the school mailed him. “Sociology goes to Gate C.” He stands still while Pagan shakes the tassel out and attaches it on the opposite side of his own.

“There! Once you have your diplomas, you’ll all move them over at the same time.” Pagan grasps his upper arms and looks him over with so much pride and love in his face that it makes his chest feel like there’s sunshine in it.

“Damn, just _look_ at you,” as Pagan squeezes his arms affectionately.

“I’m gonna kiss you now,” Ajay tells him, with a grin. “Right here in the middle of all these people.”

“Oh, is that so?” Pagan says, his eyes twinkling. “Bring it on.”

And he does, going up on his tiptoes to avoid bonking him in the face with his stupid hat, and Pagan’s hands come up, running his thumbs along his cheekbones and his mouth is soft and warm under his and it’s perfect, all perfect.

Much later, he keeps repeating the memory of that kiss in his mind to keep from falling asleep from sheer boredom. He wishes Pagan wasn’t right so often, because it’s hot and awful and so hard to even keep still. A surreptitious check of his watch tells him it’s been two hours already and they’re nowhere near done, as he watches Pagan. He had forgotten that Pagan’s technically the Chair of his department of two. The King of his own tiny domain, although right now he just looks hot and bored and slightly uncomfortable at having to sit on the stage under all those lights and cameras. Also trying not to fidget, although he keeps touching his chest. Ajay had thought at first that something was hurting him and had leaned forward in concern to see better, but it’s his pocket he keeps touching. He seems lost in thought about something, completely zoned out.

They’re doing Communications now, as he consults the program for the five hundredth time for lack of anything else to do. Communications, then Political Science, then Criminal Justice, and then finally, _finally,_ it will be his turn. He cheers louder than anyone else in his section when “Rana, Rabi Ray” is called and watches in amusement as Rabi marches across the stage with his arms held high in victory over his head, flashing peace signs. He’s wearing aviators for some reason. He nearly trips over the podium and a nearby fake potted plant, recovers with a grin, and then accidentally skips shaking hands with the President after he gets his diploma and has to go back. The audience roars with laughter as he shrugs and smiles ear to ear and waves, and Pagan rubs at his eye like Rabi is giving him a headache one last time.

Then it’s Pagan’s turn at the podium. “Will the baccalaureate graduates of Political Science please rise,” he says in his bored drawl, and they all obligingly stand and line up in rows to wait for Pagan to call their names. Sabal and Amita are in this batch, right at the very beginning, and he watches Pagan’s eyes narrow. He had been _furious_ when he’d found out what they had done, had threatened to outright fail the both of them for academic dishonesty but since it wasn’t classwork they’d tampered with the Board of Governors overrode him. Part of his fury had been pure embarrassment since they were his students, and he’d had to swallow both.

They’ll both be on his shitlist until the end of time.

“Bhandari, Amita,” he calls, icily cold.

She comes up, head held high, takes her diploma from him, shakes his hand…and he bends and whispers something in her ear, something that makes her nearly scurry through the rest of the handshakes and down the other side of the stage. He must have said something similar to Sabal because he visibly blanches, and Pagan smiles a tight, mean little smile and waves him on. If Ajay had to guess, it was probably something along the lines of ‘Were it up to me, the two of you would have been _expelled_ for that little stunt. Now get the fuck out of my sight.’ Or maybe even ‘You know, assassination is an important element of the political process. Sleep well, dear children!’ He wouldn’t put it past him.

The rest of the names go by fairly quickly, and he entertains himself by surreptitiously snapping a few photos with his phone of Pagan in his epic robes.

And then it’s his turn, as he stands with the others. This part seems to go really _really_ fast, way too fast and before he can really process it he’s moving on autopilot when Dr. Najjar calls his name, she’s pushing his diploma into his numb fingers as she takes his other hand, and holy shit Pagan stands up and is taking pictures with a smile and he probably looks like a terrified deer in headlights for them and he shakes some other hands that are stuck out towards him and then he’s back in his seat that fucking fast.

He sucks in a breath, lets it out.

Ajay looks down at the nice leather folder in his hands and flips it open and there’s his name, all official and everything. It still doesn’t feel quite real. He holds it in his hands and smiles, and whispers, “Thanks, Mom. Thanks for everything.”

Afterwards, after all the hat throwing and flashes going off, when he’s back in the lobby and scanning the crowd for Pagan’s bright hair, Rabi runs up to him.  His robes are half undone and fluttering like a cape, his hat askew.

“Oh my god Ajay we did it we did it we made it!!!” As he jumps up and down.

Ajay laughs. “Yeah, yeah, we sure did.”

“Dude, I cannot _believe_ that you worked so fucking hard that you caught up to us and graduated with my class instead…shit! Listen, me and some other guys are going out to celebrate, you should come with us!”

It would be fun, he’s definitely in the mood to celebrate…but he thinks about Pagan lost to the world in the middle of a packed arena, touching his pocket.

“Nah, I’d love to man, I really would…but there’s somewhere I need to be.”

Rabi shuffles in place a little, too excited to even stand still. “Oh yeah? That’s cool, bro. Text me if you change your mind though, okay? And like, stay in touch and stuff! Don’t be a stranger and all that shit, yeah?”

“’Course!” And he means it. Rabi is a good guy. “Listen, can you do me a big favor?” He’s just spotted Pagan and waves over his head at him. “Can you take a picture of us?”

“Sure! You and who…oh,” he says, as Pagan strides up.

“Congratulations, Mr. Rana,” he says, politely enough.  "Ajay, are you ready to go?” He eyes the press of people with obvious discomfort.

“Hang on, Rabi’s gonna take our picture.”

“Oh, uh…yeah, thanks ma…I mean, Dr. Min. You too. You guys are…yeah. Um, handsome together? A cute couple? A…”

Pagan hisses.  “Quit while you’re ahead, Mr. Rana, and take the bloody thing already.”

Ajay swats at him for being rude, and Pagan sighs and puts his arm around Ajay’s shoulders while he slides his own around his waist. Pagan surprises him by pulling him in good and close.

“Yeah, you guys are definitely too cute,” he says with a cheeky grin as he hands Ajay’s phone back. "Bye Ajay! I’ll see you later, man!”

And with that he’s off and out of sight in the milling crowd.

“Let’s get outta here,” Ajay murmurs, and takes Pagan’s hand again. “I’m…Jesus, I’m glad that’s over,” as Pagan smirks.

 

Pagan seems unusually quiet on the walk back to the car. The air is downright cold now but it feels great as they divest themselves of robes and hats, only letting go of each other to pull sleeves off.  Pagan loosens his tie and unbuttons his collar with a soft, relieved breath.

Ajay can see his breath a little, when he exhales.  “Do you think the tomato plants are going to be okay tonight?” he says, and his concern makes Pagan smile a little for some reason.

“You're such a sweet boy.  They should be fine, it’s not supposed to freeze...but I might cover them anyway.  Just in case.”  As they climb back into the Volvo, Pagan asks, “So, how does it feel? To have completed your education and be set loose on the world, all footloose and fancy free?”

“Well, I don’t know about that,” he responds, unbuttoning his spiffy borrowed jacket.

“Oh?”

“I’m thinking of pursuing an academic career,” Ajay says, a shy little smile in his voice.

Pagan touches his knee. “Do tell, my boy.”

“Okay, you know how Dr. Najjar is my advisor?” Pagan nods. “She says there’s an opening in the Soc department, and I can apply if I agree to do my Master’s coursework at the same time.”

He cocks his head a little at that. “I think it’s a wonderful idea, but it does seem a bit sudden, perhaps. What brought this on?”

Ajay is downright blushing now, but he grins cheekily.

“Well, you see, I had a professor in my first semester that was really inspirational. I thought I might follow the same career path.”

“By all means, tell me more about this inspirational fellow,” Pagan says grandly. He seems to be enjoying this little game, eyes sunny and sparkling.

“The first day I met him,” Ajay says, smiling, “he was like some kind of...tsunami, or something. A whirlwind in pink. I couldn’t take my eyes off of him, he was just so extravagantly weird…” He laughs at Pagan’s sputtering noises. “But then, that weird guy became my friend. Always encouraged me…I felt like he was _proud_ of me, when I really needed that. And then…I realized that it made me shiver when I touched him, when he touched me. I realized I was falling in love with that guy…so I went to his office and kind of…threw myself on him.”

He figured Pagan would laugh, but instead he murmurs, “You knew. That early, you knew.”

He swallows. Looking back on it now, it seems really, really fucking obvious. “Yeah, I…yeah, I think I did. Is that weird?”

“Ajay, I’ve loved you for your entire life and most of mine, in one capacity or another, and I don’t see that stopping anytime soon. Is that weird?” His smile is sweet and warm and gentle, the one that only Ajay gets to see…until he crinkles his nose. “But now that I run that back in my head…did it come out sounding creepy, perchance? I _certainly_ didn’t intend to imply any…”

Ajay interrupts him before he can really put his foot in it. “Not creepy if you didn’t mean it to be. I thought it was sweet.”

“Oh, well! That’s a relief!” His face goes serious, as he reaches for his hand. “Darling boy, do you think that you could possibly find it in your heart to…” He sighs, oddly flustered.

It’s his turn to smile warmly. “Just spit it out, it’s okay.”

“Ajay, you’ll marry me, won’t you?”

He’s known for at least a week that something was up, that Pagan was hiding something. He’s been moving a small object from room to room while Ajay had pretended not to notice, evidently unsatisfied with his own hiding places. He figured he was either planning on starting a new career in the blood diamond trade or had gone and bought a ring and, while the latter was far more likely, time would reveal which it was. He wasn’t about to snoop into his little secrets, not when watching him was so entertaining. Watching from the corner of his eye as he moved whatever-it-was around nervously, muttering to himself the whole time. Ridiculously cute.

So he has to feign surprise when the ring comes out of the pocket he’s been fidgeting with all evening, but then he blanks for a second. He’d never actually thought about what he was going to say. Besides a resounding yes.

Yes, with everything in him.

“Wow, yeah… _yeah,_ Pagan. I want…that, yeah. You. Always and always.” Not the most articulate…okay, not fucking articulate at _all,_ as his ears burn; he’s never been that good at expressing himself with words but Pagan doesn’t seem to care, his face full of incandescent joy.

Ajay leans over and kisses him hard, sharp and hot and then melting against him.  He can always say what he means this way as he kisses him until both their hearts are pounding, until he has to pull back a little to brush a tear away with his thumb. He runs it delicately, so delicately along Pagan’s bottom eyelid so his mascara won’t run, and Pagan snorts at himself. Then he grins.

“My boy…once you’re my husband, you can take all the classes you like for free! Think of the _money_ that we’re going to save on your education. No, hear me out! Don’t look at me like that,” he says, in response to Ajay’s scowl. “For a Master’s degree? We’re talking perhaps sixty, seventy thousand dollars here. We can have _such_ an awesome honeymoon. Where would you like to go? Oh, I have so much vacation time accrued it’s not even funny…”

Ajay contemplates life with this…frankly batshit older guy, this crazy man he just agreed to marry. A former gangster with a penchant for mascara and pink silk who is probably going to want to play cheesy Bollywood love songs at their wedding. This man, that holds him close in his strong and capable arms and fits against him like a puzzle piece, a man that loves him like a bottomless well. He remembers the gun in the safe under their bed, and what that means.

No, this is not a life that he ever, _ever_ envisioned for himself …

…but he finds that it’s one that suits him perfectly.

 

End

***

**Author's Note:**

> As always, suggestions/comments/ideas welcome!


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